


Two's a Crowd

by rainproof



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Activism, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst and Humor, Bisexuality, Bromance, Closeted Character, Compromise, Drunk Driving, F/M, Failed friends with benefits, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friends With Benefits, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Marijuana, Medicinal Drug Use, Recreational Drug Use, Secret Relationship, Self-Loathing, Swearing, Tony Feels, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-30
Updated: 2013-09-18
Packaged: 2017-12-09 08:37:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 48,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/772207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainproof/pseuds/rainproof
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Steve were any deeper in the closet his ass would be in <i>Narnia</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Midnight Spaghetti

**Author's Note:**

> After reading through so much excellent fic on Ao3 I found myself wanting a story in which all of Tony's fears about Steve's 1940's era repression are actually _true_. Steve has [deep rooted issues with homophobia](http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/425563/april-17-2013/-accidental-racist--song) and Tony struggles to cope. 
> 
> So this was born - fic in which Tony is full of feels, Steve is closeted, Pepper is amazing, and (legal-ish?) substance abuse occurs only on days that end in Y.
> 
> Many thanks to my dear friend Tea, whose patient brainstorming helped actually get this off the ground! I don't think it will be as funny as she was hoping, but hopefully it will still be good. <3

Tony Stark listed left, a frantic grab at the wall of the elevator all that stood between him and a graceless faceplant. He’d had too much to drink again – he’d known it would end this way, date number three with tall blonde “I’m-an-aspiring-actress” Melyssa, whose father’s trust fund money meant that her “acting” career was still getting off the ground at the ripe old age of thirty one. Two and a half hours of audition-related yammering would drive anyone to drinking.

“JARVIS,” Tony managed, resting his cheek against the cool metal paneling of the elevator. “Who’s home?”

“Master Barton is engaged in his seventh straight hour of Counterstrike on his personal floor. Dr. Banner is in his personal laboratory conducting repairs on the scanning electron microscope.” There was a faint pause, in which Tony found himself holding his breath. “and Captain Rogers is making midnight spaghetti in the communal kitchen, sir.”

Midnight spaghetti was both a team favorite and one of Steve’s specialties. Tony blew out a relieved breath and straightened up, then spent a moment adjusting his tie in the seamless, reflective metal of the elevator wall. He frowned as his clumsy fingers managed only to knock it further askew. “Communal level it is, then. Proximity warnings please, JARVIS.”

“Of course, sir.”

When the door to the team’s shared living quarters opened Tony was instantly struck by the garlicky odor of Steve’s homemade tomato sauce – delicious, chunky, full of vegetables and deliciousness. He tore off his shoes and tossed them vaguely in the direction of the shoe-cabinet left of the door, padding onwards in his socks and pausing in the doorway to the kitchen. 

Steve was an absolute _vision_ , a paragon of domestic glory that made Tony’s mouth water in ways that had nothing to do with the sauce on the stove. Broad shoulders, tight shirt, stylishly loose-fitting jeans (thank you, Natasha) and a too-small “Kiss the Cook” apron that didn’t quite tie in the back… 

“Don’t mind if I do,” Tony cleverly announced his presence and proceeded to do exactly that, running his hands up Steve’s perfect biceps and rolling onto his toes to press a soft, open-mouthed kiss against smirking lips. Caught mid-stir, Steve kept one hand on his saucepan’s handle, but set the spoon aside to tangle long fingers in Tony’s hair. Tony could feel him press them closer and knew that Steve had missed him, that Steve had waited up for his farce of a date to end, that Steve had guessed he’d be shithoused again and cooked up something appropriately carb-heavy to offset the edge of tomorrow’s hangover.

He might just be the perfect man.

Steve tasted like tomato sauce and balsamic vinegar, which was quite possibly the most un-erotic thing to ever give Tony a boner, but hey. He wasn’t complaining. His mouth was too busy for complaints. 

Tony slid his arms around Steve’s neck and arched shamelessly into his apron-clad hips, while the blonde made a little noise of protest as Tony’s elbow knocked the saucepan away. 

When Steve broke contact to check on the sauce Tony felt like the loss like a physical blow.

“Steve,” he breathed hungrily, staring at the other man. Steve’s deep blue eyes crinkled as he gave the sauce a swirl, one hand lingering at the small of Tony’s back. 

“Tony. You’ve been drinking. Whiskey sours, tonight?”

“Good guess,” Tony murmured, trying to get a bead on Steve’s lips. He missed and ended up planting a sloppy kiss against his chin instead. 

“Quite a few, from the looks of you.”

“You’d drink too if Melyssa fucking Roosevelt-Schmandt was reciting every scheduled casting call between now and August at you,” Tony complained, trying the kiss again. This time his aim was true, but Steve pulled back before he could hit the mark. The super-soldier swept Tony gently aside and moved closer to the stove.

Tony winced. He shouldn’t have mentioned the woman - Steve didn’t like to be reminded that they had names and faces and were, you know, actual people.

“How was the date?” he asked, voice pinched.

“Awful. Horrible. She asked me home and I threw up in a planter.”

Steve’s shoulders trembled with something that might have been a laugh. “You just puke-kissed me? Tony. That’s disgusting.”

“I washed my mouth out!”

“With what, more whiskey?”

Tony’s guilty silence was answer enough.

Steve looked away and shook his head. The ripple of his muscles compelled Tony to wrap his arms around the other man’s waist from behind and press his cheek firmly against the back of Steve’s neck; this way, when he moved, the pull and stretch was a physical presence against his skin. Steve was furnace-like, hot and broad and god, Tony loved everything about him.

Except, maybe….

“I wanna take a break,” Tony said, voice almost too low to be heard. He softened the words with a line of kisses along the collar of Steve’s shirt. “from dating.”

Steve tensed in his arms; Tony drew more tightly against him.

“Tony, I don’t think now is…”

“Please, Steve,” Tony managed, kissing up behind his ear. “I hate it. I hate wasting my time with these people. The point of being a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist is that _I get to do what I want whenever the fuck I want to,_ and people just sort of smile and nod and deal. I don’t want to go out and hump simpering leeches like Melyssa-spelled-with-a-fucking-Y. I want _us_. To be, you know, to be… us.”

“The problem with being an ‘us’ is that it involves, by nature, _two opinions,_ ” Steve murmured, a familiar tightness in his stance carrying over into his voice. The spoon came to a slow stop in the saucepan and Tony could feel him steadying his breathing, grounding himself against Tony’s soft words and pliant kisses. “I’m not you. I don’t… I can’t… I’m not ready for people to know. I don’t want the media to know.”

“Yeah,” Tony managed, closing his eyes. “I know… but they won’t notice. Seriously, Steve, when was the last time the media ran a story about my _lack of a love life_?”

“Two months after you started dating Pepper.”

Tony pouted, even though Steve couldn’t see it. “That’s not fair, they had photos of us making out on the airstrip - and that was technically an “are they banging” story, not a “why isn’t Tony Stark taking dumb blondes out to three hundred dollar dinner twice a week” story.”

“Well, what if we slip up and someone gets photos of us being … overly friendly? Then realizes that you’ve stopped seeing other people, puts two and two together…”

Tony couldn’t help it; he huffed out a laugh. “Then that lucky son of a bitch’ll get a fucking gold star and _I’ll_ get to escort you to all kind of parties and fundraisers, straighten your tie at the bar, play grab-ass in public, horrifically embarrass Pepper at board meetings with shmoopy text messages… okay, I do that already, but it’ll be _way_ gayer. Seriously, Steve, I’ll send them Christmas cards every year, I’ll buy them a car, I’ll buy them a garage full of cars. You have no idea how happy that would make me.”

When his hands began to sink to the edge of Steve’s jeans, the taller man pulled away. Steve moved the saucepan back and turned off the gas with entirely too much force, popping the knob off entirely. He muttered a curse and dropped the dinky piece of plastic to the stovetop in frustration. “Tony…”

Tony automatically reached out to snatch up the knob, too drunk remember that simmering spaghetti sauce equals _one hot fucking burner_. A ribbon of pain shot up his hand and he jerked away from the stove and Steve all at once, yelping. “Fuck!” 

Steve was there in a moment; all broad shoulders and gentle words, pulling Tony to the sink and running blissfully cool water over the blisters burgeoning up on the pads of his fingers. There was silence between them, just the hissing of Tony’s breath through his teeth and the splash of water against metal. 

The stress of the argument melted away – he wanted to stand there in Steve’s arms _forever._

Satisfied at last that the edge had come off the burns, Steve raised Tony’s fingers to his lips and kissed them the way his mother used to. 

Tony wilted.

“Tony, when you play with fire...”

“Oh, shut up.”

Tony tilted his face and mashed his face into Steve’s bicep, hating everything. “I just want… I’m tired of lying to everyone. To Pepper, to Rhodey, to Nat and Bruce and - ”

Steve didn’t release his fingers, rubbing his thumb against the unburned ball of Tony’s calloused palm. He kissed Tony’s temple, breathing him in. “I just want to play it safe, Tony. We’re no one’s business but our own…. I don’t care who we are out _there_ so long as we can be us _here_..”

 _But I do,_ Tony wanted to say. _I care._

Instead he pulled away and popped his fingers into his mouth, sucking on the ache until Steve started to go red.

Then he downed half a bowl of midnight spaghetti and sucked Steve off in the shower before falling asleep face-first in his pillow.

It was enough. It had to be enough.

...........................

Things had started out normal; well, as normally as they could for two costumed heroes who regularly filled their weekends with activities like “fighting mutated slug beasts” and “taking orders from a one-eyed lunatic on an invisible flying boat”. They’d been fighting (they fought a lot, back then) like dogs over a bone, Steve bowed up and growling while Tony glared, sharp and prickly. He’d thrown his hands up, called Steve a number of enthusiastically qualified obscenities, and turned to stalk away.

Steve had grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. Tony – who disliked being manhandled almost as much as he disliked behind handed things – took a swing. He’d aimed at the taller man’s brick wall of a jaw… but Steve had snared his fist midair, stepped into his space, and kissed him hard across the mouth.

It took less than a heartbeat for Tony to reciprocate, free hand fisting in Steve’s shirt, the heat of the moment making any other option impossible.

Once the degree of mutual interest was clear Tony had been quick to realize that love and hate are emotions thinly separated; at some point they’d crossed that line and tangled themselves up in one another. For his part, Tony suddenly understood that the years of idolizing/adoring/fantasizing combined with the shock of finally meeting his childhood hero meant that hadn’t resented Steve so much as resented the fact that Steve was a part of his life but not in the way he wanted him to be.

Steve probably had some similarly profound realization – that Tony was just as kickass as he was obnoxious, or that his brilliance was a light inextinguishable, precious and amazing, or … or something. Tony couldn’t always guess what was going on behind that inscrutable expression, but whatever the epiphany Steve underwent, it left them in a tangle of naked limbs across the couch in the Avengers common room… followed by a frantic scramble to safety when JARVIS informed them Bruce was in the elevator. 

They’d gathered up jeans and t-shirts and left behind a sock or two, bolting to the eastern fire escape and dashing up the stairs, sliding out of sight only moments before the elevator door slid open.

(It had been all Tony could do not to burst into semi-hysterical laughter – Captain America, sporting a sizeable hickey along his collarbone, was naked and trailing an armful of Tony’s boxers in the stairwell of Avengers Tower. It was the best thing he’d ever seen. It was better than Christmas.)

After they’d retreated to Tony’s penthouse to sort out whose clothing was whose, Tony cracked open a bottle of wine. “So, Cap,” he’d said, already dreading the answer. “You got a repeat performance in you, or was that a one-off?”

Steve paused in the act of zipping up his jeans, arched a brow at Tony’s wine-red mouth, and said simply: “I think I could be persuaded.”

So that was that.

There were Ground Rules, though. You needed Ground Rules to make something like this work or things just got stupid.

Ground Rule One had been Steve’s, and it was in the end the only rule that mattered. Curled against one another, Tony had been contemplating the gorgeous, oblique angles where Steve’s throat met his clavicle when Steve decided to crush his fledgling dreams of fidelity. 

“Tony, I don’t want the others to know about this,” he’d whispered hot and soft into the crook of Tony’s arm.

Tony’s brows twitched up in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“If we’re… going to keep doing this. I don’t want them to know.”

Talk about your loaded statements. A big chunk of Tony’s heart leapt for joy at the thought that Steve wanted to do this again (and hopefully again, and again, and…), but part had deflated, crumpling inward. After all, 78% of Tony Stark’s one-night stands tweeted their conquest from the bathroom within eight minutes of copulation…. but not Steve.

Okay, so he didn’t know how to operate Twitter, but still…. 

“What, embarrassed? The forties are a long way off, Steve. Nobody here cares what two grown men do in the bedroom. This is New York - I could propose to you if I felt like it.”

Steve had turned even redder. “It’s not that, Tony. I don’t care that you’re a man – it’s just that, you know, other people...”

“Fuck other people,” Tony said promptly and with great fervor.

Steve winced, looking like he’d swallowed something unpleasant. “You should. See other people, I mean, I don’t…”

At that, Tony propped himself up on one elbow, tearing his eyes away from the glorious planes of Steve’s abs in order to gauge the man’s expression. Much to his surprise, no eye contact was forthcoming – Steve’s gaze was fixed on the opposite wall. As Tony watched, he pressed the fingers of his free hand to his temple as if gathering his strength. 

Tony took a deep breath. “Okay, Steve, wait – aren’t you doing this backwards? We hooked up after a screaming argument. I can work with that. Are you saying _you_ want to do this again?”

That startled Steve and he glanced over at Tony, suddenly vulnerable. “I… yes?”

“Good. So do I, with enthusiasm matched only by frequency. Now that we’ve established this, you’re telling me to date around?”

“When you phrase it like that it sounds ridiculous. I’m just trying to be straight with you.”

Tony swallowed back a crack at his choice of words ( _straight_?) as Steve unwound his arms and sat up, the blankets pooling around his perfectly sculpted pecs. Cold air swept in where he’d been settled. 

The irony of this was hardly lost on Tony; usually he was the one doling out the ‘let’s just be friends’ line. No wonder his one-night stands occasionally burst into tears – this felt like an open-heart surgery without anesthesia. When had he become so invested in Steve Rogers?

“I just… I just know how quickly you tend to set people aside. I want you to know that _I_ know that this isn’t something special. I don’t want things to be awkward between us.”

Tony reached out, stroking hands through Steve’s hair and murmuring, “Of course you’re special, you’re _Captain America_ , Steve. If you’re saying this because you think it’s what I want – don’t. I’ll tell you what I want.”

“No, I … it’s what I want too, I think it’s better… this way,” Steve was turning that lovely, adorable shade of red he did when he was flustered. Tony was seized with the urge to lick the color off of him and his dick responded with a surprising amount of enthusiasm given they were two for two in the last three hours. 

“Okay,” Tony said slowly, clearly, in a voice that absolutely didn’t reflect the way his heart was pinching in on itself. “So you want to take the friends-with-benefits approach to accidentally falling into my bed. Loads of brain-shatteringly good non-exclusive sex that we don’t mention to anyone else?”

“I… I guess so,” Steve sounded uncertain. “If you’re willing to do that, then…?”

Tony blinked, then shrugged. “Cool. We’re clear, then - I’m all in.”

The corners of Steve’s eyes crinkled upwards and he grabbed the hand carding through his hair in order to kiss the knuckles affectionately. “Good. I’m glad. I’ve… I’ve wanted this, Tony, I really….”

Tony’s insides promptly liquefied – how long had Steve been checking him out without his clueing in? For that matter, when had he become _Tony_ instead of Stark? 

“Me too,” he answered, softly. “I just was too busy hating your guts to notice.” That won him a smirk, a beautiful, heart-wrenching smirk – oh god, this was going to end in fire, this was such an enormous mistake and yet…. “I don’t care who knows, but if you need privacy to be comfortable with what we’re doing, that’s fine by me.”

Steve’s look of utter warmth, adoration, and security washed over Tony; he knew there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to keep that light shining.

God, he was so _fucked_.

...........................

It could have been fine. Hell, it really _should_ have been fine. 

Tony was excellent at keeping booty calls quick, dirty, and as efficient as possible – he’d had plenty of experience in that department, after all. For his part, Steve was a living, breathing recipe for the best FWB ever… not only was he gorgeous/too young for Tony/ secretly the sexiest super hero in America, but he lived three stories beneath the Avengers Tower’s penthouse suite – meaning that it was painfully easy to take what Tony was now referring to as the Fire Escape of Assignation back and forth without anyone being the wiser. 

Board of Directors getting you down? Steve would take the edge off once you got home. Awkward working lunch with former-girlfriend-slash-CEO? A healthy dose of Steve would remind you why you’re happy you’re no longer dating the woman of your dreams. So bored you’re about to down an entire bag of greasy cholesterol filled potato chips against the doctor’s orders? Creep down the stairs and put your mouth to better use! (Your stress levels and your figure will thank you later.)

Slowly, though, they started to slip. Steve occasionally cooked dinner, he once even brought cut flowers into the penthouse to “brighten up the place”, _good lord_. Tony let him choose the evening movies, bought Steve an easel, and installed a miniature workbench in the living room so that he could tinker with the suit’s repulsors while Steve worked his way through history via Ken Burn’s endless filmography. 

The first time Steve stayed the night Tony slept more soundly than he had in years. The next morning, as a thank you, he sat Steve on the edge of the tub and kneeled, reverently shaving the fine blonde peach fuzz from his perfect chin. Swiping his blade over the sweep of throat and jaw took a certain concentration, a certain familiarity – but Tony knew every inch of Steve and didn’t nick him once.

As Tony reached for his favorite aftershave, Steve stilled his hand with a touch, turned his head, smiled sleepily into his skin. “I really….” He started, voice soft, and then caught himself. “You’re incredible, Tony.”

“I know,” Tony answered automatically, mind blown. Steve pressed a kiss to the inside of his wrist, frame shuddering with amusement.

They both knew the words meant something else.

So that’s how it went – from secret booty call to Secret Relationship without ever saying a word.

...........................

Unfortunately, it turned out that being in a Secret Relationship actually kind of sucked. 

Tony had to admit occasionally being tugged aside and kissed up against a wall a room away from their friends and colleagues was pretty fucking sexy. He loved the way Steve’s demeanor shifted imperceptibly when the door shut behind them – his expression opening and softening and mmm, that look was _all for Tony._ It was a game in a way; find as many ways to be inconspicuously close when the others were near, flirting with the line, with each other, through arguments and name-calling and sparring sessions.

It was even amusing, at first, to come up with excuses to spend time together… with minds like Natasha and Bruce on the team, their stories _had_ to be believable or they’d be figured out in a heartbeat.

Unfortunately, all those little things times a thousand wouldn’t have been enough to offset the agony of _not being able to tell the world he’d bagged Captain fucking America._ It was awful. It was the worst secret he’d ever had to keep… and his track record with secrets in general wasn’t great to begin with.

Even knowing that silence meant getting to have Steve, and knowing that Steve was happier and more comfortable in their private, cocooned little world, it _sucked_. 

Tony wanted to buy him things, shower him with everything he asked for and then some, wanted to take him to society galas and scandalize/disappoint the local debutantes, wanted to tattoo ‘property of Tony Stark’ across his ass and slap it anytime he was feeling particularly obnoxious. 

Tony Stark, as a general rule, wanted EVERYTHING. And Tony Stark wasn’t used to not getting what he wanted.

Even so, Tony struggled to be true to his word. Steve was worth it, after all – he was pretty much the pinnacle of human perfection, the perfect foil for a depressive workaholic inventor. Sometimes Tony even let himself believe Steve's reasons for secrecy - it was pretty damn unprofessional to be banging a teammate, let alone the de-facto leader of the Avengers. Captain America had a reputation to maintain, and what's more, Tony's reputation would by thrown at them nonstop if their affair was public knowledge. Sometimes Tony even felt good about it.

There was one thing, though, that he couldn't feel square with.

Pepper.

Tony had, on a few occasions, asked Steve if he would mind letting Pep in on things. Pepper was incredible – strong, smart, determined. Tony had spent the last eight months carefully piecing back their post-relationship friendship with the kind of careful attention he paid to reassembling an engine, carefully cleaning and polishing each piece before slotting it into place. Pepper was, outside of the team, the center of Tony’s world. He’d spent years telling Pepper everything about his life (well, mostly everything) and now the best thing to happen to him since _her_ had necessitated radio silence. 

Steve never said no outright, but the way he shifted and frowned and looked almost _scared_ by the thought of her knowing left Tony feeling cold all over. There wouldn’t be any joy in sharing something like that with Pepper, why bother?

This year they’d been redoubling their ad campaign for mobile devices in the Japanese market, which meant Pepper was spending most of her time on the west coast and making monthly trips in Tokyo, but still. 

It was hard.

Tony knew that she knew that something was different between them, and he suspected that _she_ suspected that he was dating again, but any time he’d felt the urge to spill growing inexorable he’d hung up, pushed back, stubbornly bricked his emotional walls back into place.

If she sometimes sounded a bit sad when they spoke, well, that was part of the whole breakup package. It wasn’t his problem.

Worse than the sense of sneaky betrayal that came with keeping Pepper and Rhodey in the dark was that Steve, preoccupied with his image in the media, insisted that Tony continue dating around. “The team is used to you bringing strangers home every other week,” he’d said. “I think they’ll wonder if you don’t continue it, at least every once in a while.”

“How the hell do they know about my sex life? I never send anyone home through the Avengers floors.

“They just _do_. Clint and Natasha keep up with everyone, either through JARVIS or cameras of their own, who knows?”

“If they have this floor bugged I will kick them the fuck out of this tower,” Tony growled, and surprisingly, he meant it. “I’m the only one who gets to spy creepily on my tenants. Well, me and JARVIS, of course.”

JARVIS interrupted them then, evidently taking Steve’s suspicions of his security systems quite personally. “Masters Barton and Romanov have not entered your penthouse to date, sir.”

“Thank god,” muttered Tony. “Thanks, J. Please inform me if that changes.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Still, I think it would be a good screen,” Steve leaned in and squeezed Tony’s arms, running his thumbs along the sinuous curve of taut biceps. “You don’t have to sleep with them, but… you know. Go out, have a drink, have … have fun. Don’t stay here and be miserable on my account.”

This was the furthest Tony had been from miserable in years. He opened his mouth and the words fell out – subtle, Stark, real subtle. “This is the furthest from miserable I’ve been in years.”

Steve’s smile was gentle and warmed Tony from his toes to the tips of his ears. Strong arms wrapped around his shoulders and an affectionate kiss met his temple. “I’m glad, Tony… I'm glad that you trust me. I’m a strategist, I really believe this will make it easier in the long run.”

There was a long, lingering moment of unhappiness before Tony huffed out a thin-lipped “Alright.” 

After all, what would Steve do if he said no? Leave? Tony wasn’t sure he could stand that. Losing Pepper had been a punch to the gut… losing Steve would be losing a limb. He _needed_ Steve in the way he needed oxygen and a good socket wrench, Steve had somehow become a load-bearing joint in the schematic of his life.

Anyway, there had been Ground Rules. Tony had agreed.

“Thank you,” Steve murmured, before backing him into a wall. He slid his massive palms up Tony's ribcage, soft and teasing, before peeling off his shirt and pressing a hot row of kisses against his collarbone. 

He was warm and present and _way too good_ for someone like Tony.

_This is enough._

...........................

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like "angst and humor" should really be Tony's official tag. "ANGST AND HUMOR" ... Iron Man in a nutshell.


	2. Hallway Footsteps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This contains vague references to events in the Iron Man 3 trailers, but seeing as I haven't seen the film (homg so close), no true spoilers are present!

That August Tony broke three ribs and managed a grade 4 concussion. 

Personally, he considered that a small sort of victory – three ribs, multiple lacerations, and a bonk on the head was on the low end of his estimate of potential personal damage … he’d run the numbers before diverting all power to the chest beam and going for broke. The fall was only three stories, but three stories were enough.

The trouble with having had a three-inch futuristic generator implanted in your sternum for the past few years was that, aside from living with chronic pain, injuries to the general chest and torso were a problem. Broken ribs necessitated a dozen scans performed from half a dozen angles as doctors reassured themselves that no (more) permanent damage had been done. For some reason medical professionals tended to err on the side of caution when it came to world-famous multibillion-dollar superheroes. Who knew?

Fortunately (unfortunately?) this time around panicked doctors had lowered him into a medically induced coma, which spared him a nail-biting two-day wait to see if his ticket had finally been punched. By the time the swelling in his brain went down and he was brought back to the world of the living, the prognosis was good.

The team, however, was not spared the wait. From the moment he woke up they fell into their respective roles, masking their worry in their own special ways. Barton teased him mercilessly but brought him lunch each and every day. Bruce snuck him in his tablet and messaged him every few minutes until Tony hacked his own medical file and forwarded the updates to Bruce’s lab. Natasha kissed him on the forehead and taught him how to say things like “you miserable son of a bitch” in Russian, while Pepper slammed a stack of paperwork onto the stand next to the bed, enumerating the consequences he would face if he weren’t caught up on contracts before his hospital release. 

There was enough anger in her voice that he knew she’d been scared. 

For his part Steve glowered, fumed, bitched for a while about unnecessarily personal risk and then, when Tony laughed, informed him that he shouldn’t bother showing up at all if he was going to use Avengers missions as an excuse to scratch his suicidal itch.

“Aw,” Tony smirked, stoned out of his mind on codeine and tickled by the way Steve flushed. “I think someone missed me.”

“Stow it, Stark. You’re either _on_ the team or off it entirely. You decide.”

When he stormed out, Tony wasn’t the only one to note the supersoldier-sized handprint he’d left in the metal frame of his hospital bed. 

In a perverse way it was hard not to enjoy those moments… moments when Steve’s feelings washed over him in front of everyone, moments his anger was so palpable that Tony could feel it edging across the line of hate into love. It didn’t matter that he was furious – Tony loved holding the whole sum of his attention.

He wasn’t the only one to see it, though. Natasha lingered as the rest of the group filtered out; she looked tired, her hair swept up in a casual tail, her shoulders tense beneath the fabric of a soft black tee. She looked between Tony and the door, thoughtfully running her fingers along the dent in his bedframe. “Steve was worried,” she observed.

“Yeah, whatever.” Tony glared at the handprint as though it were Cap himself, the silent pleasure he felt in Steve’s protective streak warring with genuine annoyance at being made to lie to Natasha – Natasha was terrifying when she thought she was being lied to. 

Unfortunately, nothing piqued Nat’s curiosity like a taciturn and silent Tony Stark. Tony felt the weight of her full attention as she studied him thoughtfully.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Shit. Play dumb. “Wait, what?”

“Why he’s mad.”

“Don’t ask me, Tasha. He’s wound so tightly a dropped pin would set him off. Dude needs to smoke a bowl and learn to relax.” Okay, good, that sounded sullen - Natasha might buy sullen.

“No one blames him for being concerned,” the redhead said, gently. “He cares about-”

“If he cared about me he’d get the fuck out of my hair.”

“…his teammates,” she finished, giving Tony a pointed look.

Tony winced. Natasha was enough of a mind reader that even the tiniest slip could show your hand; Tony was absolutely dead in the water.

“The team cares about you, Tony,” Natasha said, softly. “You can be honest with us.”

“When am I not honest, Tasha? Usually people complain that I’m TOO honest. It’s a side effect of the whole verbal diarrhea thing… can’t control what’s coming out of my mouth, it’s just sort of… BLEHHH, unstoppable and sometimes horribly disgusting.” 

That earned him a sour look, but the feint wasn’t enough to put her off the scent. “God, you try too hard.”

“ _You_ try too hard.” Maybe he could blame it on the painkillers? Yep, it could definitely be the codeine speaking.

Natasha pursed her lips and shook her head, the plume of her hair wobbling back and forth. _God,_ he knew that look; he was in so much trouble. “Just… don’t back yourself into a corner because you’re too stupid to trust us. The Avengers won’t begrudge you something that makes you happy. You deserve to be happy.”

“Not stupid,” Tony mumbled. “ _Genius_. Remember? Genius, billionaire, pla-“

“Oh, shove it, Stark.” Natasha swept out of the room but closed the door gently, so he knew she wasn’t really mad.

 _Good_ , Tony thought. That went well.

He stared at Steve’s handprint until the painkillers overwhelmed his psyche and he slid, slowly, back into unconsciousness.

...........................

Tony texted Melyssa back that night, without listening to any of her voicemails. He told her he’d been downed in combat and then hooked up with his nurse. She called him a frigid tiny-dicked bastard (patently untrue, she’d never gotten her hands on his dick) and told him never to call her again. _Finally._

...........................

It only took 17 hours for the whitewashed walls of his hospital room to start driving Tony nuts. The bandages around his forehead itched. His ribs hurt. The hospital wouldn’t accept his medical marijuana card… just another reason California was superior to New York City. He’d draft some kind of formal recommendation that the Avengers Initiative relocate to a cushy beach house just as soon as his own cushy beach house could be rebuilt post-Mandarin. Clint and Thor would love California – he had a feeling Thor would be a natural born surfer.

Worse than all of the above, Steve’s furious exit kept replaying against his eyelids. Had he gone too far? Not far enough? He’d figured Steve would return or at the very least _call_ once he’d cooled down, but thus far Tony’d received nothing but stony silence. 

He had to talk to Steve. He _had_ to; this was like some kind of inhuman torture, how could Captain America be so cruel?

After filling Steve’s voicemail inbox with messages to that general effect, Tony had to satisfy himself with the next best thing – programing (via illicit tablet, Bruce was truly a gentleman as well as a scholar) something he dubbed the CAP (Conversational Autonomy Protocol), a limited AI which drew from the endless hours of recorded conversations in the security databanks at Stark Tower to simulate (with a projected 79% accuracy) Steve’s conversational patterns. Tony then proceeded to have a three-hour pretend discussion about his relationship status with his imaginary-friend version of Steve, pausing for breath only when the night nurse came in to check his vitals.

At half past five the rattle of gurneys in the hallway told Tony the shifts were changing – he’d been up all night. How was it that time passed so quickly in his lab and yet so inexorably slow in hospitals? It was true at every freaking one – the nights were long, lonely, and endless. 

He hated hospitals.

His oblong room was small but included an en suite bathroom complete with horrible fluorescent lights and a tepid, antiseptic smell. Tony braced his hands on the edge of the sink and stared at himself in the mirror, taking in the weary features of the man facing him with a scowl.

Fluorescent lights did NO ONE favors, why the hell did doctor’s offices insist on it? Surely it was just the lighting adding years to his features, that or the fact that’d he’d just performed a three story swan dive into concrete. It wasn’t that he was actually starting to feel the years, that any day now Steve would notice how utterly out-of-Tony’s-league he happened to be and sprang for someone younger, cuter, female…..

Tony dug the heels of his palms into his eyes, and began blearily reciting the phrases he’d been practicing the night before. 

_Pathetic._

“I’m not dating anymore,” he told the mirror, sternly. “I’ve been dating for like, twenty five years. I’m tired of it. It _sucks_. I want to date you, and even if you won’t date me back, I’m not gonna waste my time with these high society bimbos. I’m a busy man, Steve, and I make my own schedule.”

That sounded bitchy; if he sounded too bitchy, Steve might leave him for someone less high maintenance. Tony Stark knew he was a lot of work, but he also thought he was worth it…. would Steve still think that if he started throwing around ultimatums?

He tried again, leveling his toothbrush at the mirror. 

“I know I have a reputation for being easy… okay, for being kind of a manslut, I know, I know, I was young and it was awesome and I don’t regret a thing, but a lot has changed in my life, Steve. I don’t care if the public notices that I’m a changed man. I dated Pepper for longer than I’ve dated anyone ever, I don’t think the tabloids will think it strange if I stop dating around.”

That sounded better… and it was true, which Steve was bound to like. Afghanistan had changed everything, and then the Battle of New York had happened and the world shifted _again_ … let alone everything that happened with the Mandarin. Maybe it was the posttraumatic stress talking, but Tony had little-to-zero desire to let any more strangers into his life. He’d rather be a misanthropic genius hanging out in his basement with his good friends Jack Daniels and Jose Cuervo than go back to the Tony-Stark-billionaire-weapons-specialist shtick.

That just wasn’t who he was, now. That wasn’t the man Steve wanted, and Tony couldn’t stand being something other than what Steve wanted.

“Steve,” he tried again, slumping and pressing his head into the heel of his hands. “It’s not fair. I just… I can’t. I hate this.”

“Mister Stark?” 

He jerked in surprise, banging his knee sharply on the cabinet and twisting his ribs hard enough to send a stab of pain through the painkiller induced miasma. The morning nurse – a dark-eyed young man in his late twenties - peeked through the open bathroom door uncertainly. He held a clipboard and a Dixie cup full of pills and his nametag read ‘BRAD’.

“Is everything alright?” The nurse asked, arching a brow that suggested he’d caught the tail end of Tony’s one-sided conversation. 

“It’s fucking peachy,” muttered Tony, and reached for his meds.

...........................

Tony was checked out of the hospital two days later, once the doctors were convinced the fractures were set and his respirations weren’t too depressed. He’d used Bruce’s tablet to run diagnostics of his own on the data gathered during his comatose 48 hours - he trusted his own extrapolations far more than any medical professional's. 

Pepper personally escorted him out; he’d shocked the hell out of her by actually completing all of her paperwork, though he’d be lying if he said he’d read all of it. She was in a cheerful mood, though Tony couldn’t tell if it was due the good prognosis on his ribs or the completed paperwork. 

She also, he noticed, had dark circles under her eyes that concealer couldn’t quite hide. 

“Are you alright, Pep?” Tony asked gently, reaching out to touch her shoulder. (He’d gone for her cheek and then shifted his aim – that wasn’t for him, not anymore.) Pepper startled at the question, as though nobody had thought to ask her that lately. 

Tony felt a little flair of guilt in the pit of his stomach… he knew what it was like to have the pressures of Stark Industries weighing you down. Those expectations couldn’t be any easier for a woman without the Stark name attached to her own. 

“I suppose I am,” Pepper spoke after a moment’s thought, doing up the buttons of Tony’s shirt. “It’s just… these meetings in Tokyo are exhausting, and it’s just not going well. My sleep cycle won’t seem to reset.” 

“I happen to have prescriptions for seven different painkillers right here,” Tony teased. “I bet one of them would do the trick.” 

Pepper rolled her eyes. “Thanks, but no thanks. You’ve attended enough conferences hopped up on hydrocodone for the both of us. ” 

“It was just the one!” 

“One is enough,” Pepper said patiently, as if speaking to a small child. Tony didn’t think that was quite fair; it was the first conference he’d attended post-Afghanistan, back when the casing of the original, slightly-larger first gen reactor had grated against his sternum, producing chronic pain that had taken months to adjust to and medicate. In the end, the changes necessitated by replacing the core with a brand-spanking-new element had alleviated the pressure and reduced his pain levels. 

It had been a pretty hilarious conference, though. 

“Running a company is a lot of work,” Tony observed. “You should probably hire some pretty young thing to do all of that for you.” 

“How’s that strategy working out for you?” she asked, amused. 

“Considering that it guarantees us a lunch date every other week? Pretty damn well.” 

Pepper zipped up his jacket and adjusted the collar with a tired smile; Tony shared it with her, then reached out and squeezed her hand affectionately. The moment was long and terribly good; they’d finally reached equilibrium, a confidence and closeness that had been missing in the aftermath of their breakup. 

Tony had missed this badly - Pepper was one hell of a woman. 

The shift supervisor along with Brad the Handsome Dark Eyed Nurse – whom Tony had gotten to know over his short stint in the hospital, hovered at his side, holding a thick swath of paper. Tony slid his sunglasses on, slapped a grin on his face, and let the younger man open the door for him. 

Unsurprisingly there was a throng of photographers outside the door. Despite Pepper’s urging, Tony took the time to shake a few hands and answer questions in his trademark offhand way, laughing at himself and the people around him. By the time he made it to Happy – giving the man a thump on the shoulder in lieu of a handshake – sweat had broken out on his forehead from the effort. 

Happy opened the car doors, first for Pepper, then for Tony. 

“Thanks for everything, Brad,” said Tony, feeling impish. 

“No problem, Mister Stark. Miss Potts has all of our care recommendations in hand; you should be checking the spirometer twice a day, more if you’re feeling light headed…. And of course we recommend a return visit and x-ray once a week,” the young man said, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. 

That smile was all the invitation Tony needed - he stepped smoothly into Brad’s Personal Space and let a hand rest possessively on his hip. It was a liberty, but he’d quickly deduced it was not unwanted. His suspicions were proved correct as a blush bloomed across the poor guy’s features and his eyes flickered over, nervously, to where the press was happily snapping away. 

“I just might do that, provided _you’re_ working,” Tony said, pleased. Then, lowering his voice, he slid the young man a few hundreds, gave his ass a pat, and added, “Thanks for your help. Buy yourself something nice.” 

Flashbulbs sparked, Brad looked faint, the shift supervisor sighed, and Happy shut the door with a click. 

Pepper stifled a groan. “ _Tony_. You are so – “ 

“Incredible?” Tony asked, amused, as the car pulled away. He took her hand and kissed her knuckles affectionately. 

“Incorrigible.” 

“Eh, it adds to my charm.” 

Pepper flashed him her ‘I Hate When You’re Right’ face and didn’t even protest when Happy dropped a bag of burgers into Tony’s lap. 

...........................

Pepper settled Tony in before sequestering herself in the penthouse’s guest office for a conference call. Tony fetched her a double espresso and two chocolate macadamia nut cookies before leaving her to it; it was a tiny token of his affection, but it’d have to do for now. 

When Tony ventured down to the common floor JARVIS ordered in dinner and the rest of the Avengers turned up for a night of pizza and movies. The big leather wrap-around couch in the common living room was soon draped with blankets and the occasional empty pizza box or bag of Cheetos. Tony considered his war wounds deserving of the coveted center spot, sandwiched between Natasha and Bruce, and he assumed the position like a king on his throne. Clint lay with his head in Natasha’s lap, fingers twitching over his phone, while Thor and Steve, taking up the most room, bookended the affair; Thor with Clint’s legs in his own lap and a beer firmly clasped in one hand, Steve resolutely attempting to watch the film despite the endless running commentary on his left. 

It was as solid an Avengers Snuggle Pile as Tony had ever witnessed; it sure felt good to be home. 

Clint was the one that spoiled things – hitting something on his phone while the team rolled through Peter Sellers’ best works (Tony felt that Dr. Strangelove was all the education Steve would ever require on the Cold War) and laughing out loud. 

“Jesus, Tony, the Paparazzi are hounding that poor bastard at the hospital,” he grinned over at Tony as Jack D Ripper began to espouse the benefits of rainwater and pure grain alcohol. 

“Hm?” Tony asked, licking sauce off his fingers. He felt the sudden weight of Steve’s attention, so he grinned his most self-satisfied grin. “Oh, yeah. Brad the Nurse. What can I say? The photogs were nice enough to see me off, thought I might as well give them something to talk about.” 

Clint flipped his phone and displayed the perfect snap of Tony playing grab-ass while tipping his favorite nurse – it was a good photo, the angle flattering. From the back Tony could see the way Brad had straightened, then leaned into his warmth. Pulitzer worthy, for sure. “Complete with Perez Hilton cracking jokes about _emergency colonoscopies_. You’re such a tool, Tony. That kid can’t be older than twenty.” 

“He was at least twenty five and seriously? _Look_ at him, even scrubs can’t disguise that ass! You’d have grabbed, too.” Tony tried to lift his arms to sculpt a glorious, pert butt in the air before him… but the pain was too great, so his attempt fell rather flat. 

“I don’t think so,” snorted the archer. 

“I might’ve,” Natasha smirked, “but _I_ wouldn’t have gotten caught on film. You’re showing your hand, Stark.” 

As she spoke her eyes weren’t on Tony at all – they were locked on Steve. Shit. Shit shit shit. 

“Where’s the fun in that?” Tony quipped, plastering over the sinking feeling in his gut with a grin. He could feel Steve’s mood darkening, but Cap just reached for the remote and tapped up the volume. 

Tony knew the motion was meant to buy time; Steve had better hearing than any of them, except maybe the Hulk. 

Fortunately, JARVIS – lovely, gorgeous, wonderful JARVIS – chose that moment to break softly into the conversation. “Sir, the gelato has arrived.” 

“There’s _gelato_?!” Tony perked up, an effort which sent pain shuddering through him. “Who ordered gelato? I’m fairly sure Italian desserts have magical curative properties…. you can trust me on this, I’m a scientist. I’d better eat it all.” 

“Jane has introduced me to the finest in flavored ice! Do not fear, my friends, I took the liberty of ordering two of _everything_ ,” Thor announced, looking like a cat who’d gotten into the cream. It had taken ages for Tony to create a tablet that Thor could use without breaking/frying, and another few weeks for Clint (damn the man) to teach him the beauties of ordering in. These days the Tower was often besieged by delivery boys weighed down with whatever Thor had found online and wanted to try – including a few occasions where what he’d ordered for dinner wasn’t food at all. 

Gelato derailed the Perez Hilton conversation more effectively than anything Tony could have hoped for. He generously allowed Bruce first choice (he was fairly sure the good Doctor was suffering from a serious case of the munchies, but you never knew with Bruce) and then piled espresso and burnt sugar together in a cup and sank back into the couch, sighing fondly. 

He’d almost forgotten about the Brad incident until he’d dragged himself up to the penthouse two hours later, more than ready to combine his painkillers with a glass of scotch and then collapse into his massive bed for the foreseeable future. 

Entering the penthouse, Tony heaved a sigh and gingerly lowered himself onto an ottoman, gritting his teeth as he attempted to unlace his sneakers without bending his torso. He didn’t think he’d be able to unbutton his shirt or jeans either – oh, well. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time he’d faceplanted fully dressed into bed. 

When door to the fire escape clicked shut in the hallway and Steve strode into the living room unannounced, Tony knew he was in trouble. 

“Sir-“ JARVIS began, but Tony held up his hand. 

“Hang on JARVIS. What can I do for you, Cap?” 

Steve stared at him for a long moment, expression unreadable. Tony picked out familiar twitches betraying hints of concern, more than a little anger, and something else… something new. Steve took in Tony’s predicament, his half-unlaced shoes and the traces of pain at the corner of his eyes, and immediately knelt at his feet, reaching for the laces without question. 

“Please tell me you aren’t still mad,” Tony started, plaintively. Steve’s fingers worked the laces free, holding his calf as he slid the first shoe free. 

“I’m not…. mad.” It evidently pained him to say it. “But I’m not happy, either. Your ribs are still broken.” 

Tony huffed out a sigh. “Steve. Seriously. I did what I thought I needed to do, and there was a strong chance Thor would catch me if the thrusters were incapacitated. It was a calculated risk, the odds were in my favor.” 

“You miscalculated.” 

“Everyone miscalculates sometimes! Even you, captain tightpants. Are you going to tell me I should stop counting on my teammates? Because that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.” 

Steve peeled off his left sock and moved to the right, not rising to the bait. For someone so young he could be disturbingly prescient. 

For a moment the silent stretched on, then Tony looked away. “You didn’t come visit me.” 

“I didn’t think it’d be a good idea.” 

“So visiting your injured teammate in the hospital is too gay for us, now? Clint visited. So did Bruce…. Thor brought me cupcakes. _Cupcakes._ If that’s not a little homo I don’t know wha-” 

_“Tony,”_ Steve broke in, shaking his head. “I wasn’t worried about what other people would think about it. I was embarrassed by how badly I acted the first time I went, and I thought you’d be angry with me.” 

“I filled your voicemail with messages asking to speak to you!” 

“And by the time I was able to check them, there were six messages growing progressively _more angry_ with each and every recording.” Steve started methodically massaging his feet, the heel of his thumb grinding into the ball of Tony’s foot. It was difficult not to groan obscenely as the pressure points began to release; Tony had no idea who’d taught Steve the art of massage but if he did they were definitely going on the Christmas card list. 

Tony blew out a long, slow breath as tension began leaking out of him. “I wasn’t mad, I was hurt and lonely and stoned out of my gourd on painkillers. I wanted to see you.” That last bit was painfully honest by Tony’s standards; he hated the pathetic edge of it. 

“You can’t have been _that_ lonely,” Steve muttered, and Tony felt his hands tense. He knew that sign – Steve had let slip something he hadn’t meant to. 

Brad. He was angry about the goddamn _nurse_. “Oh, please, Steve. You can’t be serious.” 

“Can’t I?” Steve asked, raising his eyes to Tony, brow pinched. “You were … very _friendly_ with that young man. Slipping him cash with your hands all over his…” The blush Tony adored was blooming again. 

“I staged it,” Tony shrugged, easily. “It’s what I do, Steve. I wanted to give them something to talk about that wasn’t how much I suck at not breaking every bone in my body. It didn’t mean anything.” 

The blonde’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “Well, I didn’t like it. I don’t want to see things like that, Tony. It’s bad enough that you always tell me about your dates, I don’t want a front-row seat when you’re doing… things like that with a stranger. Did you stop to think reminding the media that you’re interested in men might kindle speculation?” 

Tony felt himself flush and jerked his foot from Steve’s hands so sharply he hissed in pain. Clutching at his side with one hand, he shoved a finger into Steve’s shoulder. The other man was visibly torn between reaching out to comfort him and backing away in anger, but Tony didn’t care. 

That was bullshit – that was _such_ bullshit! Tony spent at least 67% of his waking hours wishing he didn’t _have_ to be around anyone other than Steve, putting himself through endless hours of dull formalities with the single socialite crowd _just because Steve asked him to_. Tony was certainly suffering for the fucking cause; Steve could handle sharing a bit of the burden. 

“ _You’re_ the one who wants a smoke screen, Steve! I told you weeks ago I was tired of dating, _you_ made it a stipulation for our… our whatever the fuck this is.” 

Now Steve looked genuinely stricken, folding his hands and tugging on a fingertip as though he had no idea what to do with himself. “Well – look, the girls are… the girls aren’t, they’re different – “ 

“They’re not different! I’m bisexual, Steve. That means if you’re going to get all bitchy and threatened by the people _you’re asking me to spend time with_ because you’re freaked out that people might realize you enjoy the occasional deep-dicking, you need to get just as tight-assed about the women, too. It’s all the same to _me_.” 

Steve’s face flushed like an apoplectic tomato and he unfolded himself to stand, glaring at Tony. “I’m not threatened – I just, I care about you, Tony, I’m trying to do what’s best for both of us! I don’t understand why, when we’re trying to keep… us… under wraps, you’d get grabby with a male nurse in front of half a dozen cameras!” 

“Please,” Tony ground out. He knew he should stop, he knew the expression of hurt on Steve’s face was going to haunt him once the conversation had ended, but he _just couldn’t._ Maybe it was the impaired judgment brought on by his daily painkiller cocktail, or maybe it was just months of frustration bubbling to the surface… either way, he’d had enough. “Steve, chill the fuck out. The media’s known this as long as I have – they outted me to my old man the minute I was legal. I didn’t care then, I don’t care now, and you’re never going to cram me back in the fucking closet, so _don’t even try_!” 

The blonde’s mouth opened, then shut, blinking hard. He looked ready to either punch something or burst into tears – or both, but at least he’d been rendered inarticulate. Hallelujah! 

“You’re just jealous, which is completely irrational,” Tony pressed his point. “I don’t want anyone but you and you’ve put a big fucking conditional on our relationship that I’m busting my ass to work with. I’m just trying to do what YOU asked me to.” 

“Don’t act like it’s a hardship!” Steve scowled. “You love going out!” 

“WITH PEOPLE I CARE ABOUT,” Tony threw his hands up as high as his arms would go. “With people I love! With you!” 

The L word hung in the air for a moment, having a visible affect on the blonde. Steve swallowed and stepped back, his voice grating. “…you could have said no, Tony...” 

“I DID!” Tony could feel his hands trembling, the pain in his ribs turning his vision red at the edges. 

Just then the creak of door hinges broke through the silence. 

Tony turned, and the bottom of his world dropped out beneath him. Standing in the doorway, wrapped in a fluffy red bathrobe, was Pepper. Her mouth had fallen half open and there were soft pink lines mashed into her cheek… which meant she’d finally managed to fall asleep only to be roused by a shouting match in the living room. 

And oh, god, the look on her face… 

Tony winced, stepping unconsciously towards her – while Steve took a step away from Tony, face completely drained of color. “Miss Potts,” he said, voice cracking. “I… oh, Christ. I’m sorry, I thought we were alone.” 

The look he gave Tony was sharp enough to cut glass. 

“Don’t look at me,” Tony scowled at the other man. “Do you have _any idea_ how many drugs I’m on right now? You could set the proximity warnings for once, Rogers!” 

“I did try to warn you, sir,” JARVIS observed. Tony flipped off the nearest camera lens... which was both petty and remarkably unsatisfying. 

Pepper looked from Tony to Steve, back to Tony, and then – much to the horror of everyone in the room – began to _cry_. 

Tony felt the tears like a fist to the gut – it hurt worse than breaking a rib; and boy, did he ever know. “Pepper?! Hey, Pepper, I can explain all of this-” 

Pepper just whirled in a rush of soft ginger hair, slipping back into the hall and retreating into one of the penthouse's many guest rooms. The door slammed shut behind her. 

“What the hell?!” Tony asked the silent room, rushing to Pepper’s door and trying the knob – locked, of course. He pounded on the door until his breath was coming in sharp, painful gasps. “JARVIS, let me in!” 

“Sir, you know I am programmed to respect Miss Potts’ privacy settings in any scenario which doesn’t involve direct threats of physical danger,” JARVIS reminded him, apologetically. 

Steve was suddenly behind Tony, apparently forgetting that _someone_ in the room had broken ribs. A thick hand clapped on his shoulder and turned him around to face flashing blue eyes. The effort sucked the wind out of Tony and he slumped back against Pepper’s door, panting. 

“You told me you and Pepper were through,” Steve hissed, accusingly. 

“Jesus, Steve, what the fuck – really? Of course we’re through! I would never cheat on Pepper!” 

“Then _why_ \- standing there _in your robe_ -“ 

“I’M TRYING TO FIGURE THAT OUT, STEVE!” Tony shoved ineffectually at the blonde, too furious to care that the effort tore the stitches in his side. “If you didn’t _notice_ , I’m currently trying to bang down Pepper’s door to get some answers! Could you, for once in your life, just give me the benefit of the doubt?!” 

When Steve opened his mouth to counter-attack, Tony felt like _he_ might burst into tears. When he spoke again his voice was ragged and breathless. “I’m not an idiot, Steve, and I’m not actually bastard enough to cheat on most incredible woman I've ever known. I don’t know why she’s crying but I’m going to fix whatever’s wrong _the very fucking second you get out of my face!_ ” 

For a moment Steve stayed rooted to the spot like a massive tree, thick and looming; then the angry expression on his face splintered and he took half a step away, uncertainly. “I… I can…” 

“Go away, Steve.” Bone-tired, Tony turned back to the door and pressed his forehead against the expensive, polished wood. He might me madly in love with Steve, but there were some things in the world that simply superseded domestic disputes. 

Pepper was just one of those things. 

“But I-“ 

“Just _go_.” 

After another awful moment, the sound of footsteps on plush carpet signaled Steve’s retreat. 

Tony counted to ten, took a deep breath, and tried the door again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Pepper ilu D:
> 
> 2\. [this HORRIBLY depressing song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQP0FzH38dc) is my mental soundtrack to every Steve-and-Tony-in-the-hospital fic!scene EVER.
> 
> 3\. Nobody in the world will EVER convince me MCU Tony Stark does not have and use a medical marijuana card. SERIOUSLY.
> 
> 4\. i know, i know, jealous!steve is kind of a dick; Steve is stubborn and intractable when he believes he's right... but it will get better! Eventually.


	3. Growing Pains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY. I now have Iron Man 3 under my belt ... it's kind of sad when you watch a new Marvel movie holding your breath in the hopes that it won't disrupt the continuity of your fanfiction. <3
> 
> (oh hey, may the fourth be with you!)

“Pepper! _Pepper!!_ “ Tony shouted, the name strangling off into a frustrated groan. “Pep, please open the door. Steve is gone and I really need to talk to you. REALLY. REALLY REALLY. PEPPER!”

Given that every time he pounded on the door his ribs felt like they were seizing, Tony settled for banging his head against it. Maybe Pepper would have a video feed of the hallway up and see him giving himself head trauma on her account. When their positions were reversed Tony generally did exactly that, taking smug satisfaction in watching his pursuers fight with his security protocols.

 _Thunk. Thunk. Thunk._ Damn it, that actually hurt. Maybe the red at the corner of his vision wasn’t anger after all?

“Sir,” JARVIS observed after a brief moment, “Miss Potts is requesting that you stop cracking your skull on her door, and would like to remind you that the swelling of your brain, if not your ego, was only recently brought under control by trained professionals.”

HA! She did have a feed up. He _knew_ it.

“Well then,” Tony murmured. He allowed himself more _thunk_ and then clapped a hand to the side of his temple, staggering somewhat theatrically within view of JARVIS’ hallway camera. 

Unfortunately, what with the damaged ribs and all, his attempt to catch himself against the opposite wall failed spectacularly. He half-slid, half-fell to the ground, landing with a yelp as his vision went momentarily black.

Despite (because of?) the slightly overdramatic approach, Pepper threw open the door and was there beside him in a heartbeat, her soft hands catching his wrists. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her nose flushed pink – she was a pretty crier, it figured.

“Tony, oh god, you should sit down –“

“It’s fine,” Tony managed; the way he was gasping for breath wasn’t an act. “I should – maybe, the spirometer….”

Pepper, being the most reliable & determined woman on the planet, helped Tony into the living room and pressed the spirometer into his hands. Tony breathed into the mouthpiece of the handheld device, watching the tiny piece of plastic within rise and then fall at a level far too low for proper oxygenation of the bloodstream – no wonder he was feeling dizzy. Where had he left those O2 tanks…?

In the time it took him to draw those connections, Pepper had set an oxygen canister on the coffee table and shoved a mask into his hands. He took it gratefully and concentrated on deep, solid inhalations… easier said than done in his condition.

It was a good thing he’d kept these around – you never knew when a steady oxygen supply might come in handy.

Pepper watched him through narrow, teary eyes, clearly trying to deduce whether or not his ass needed to be redeposited in a medical facility. His panting breaths slowed until she evidently decided against it, sitting back on the couch and pressing her face into the sleeves of his robe, shoulders hitching with barely-audible sobs.

He swallowed the urge to reach out and touch her hand. Instead, as his breathing grew easy, he pulled the mask away for long enough to say “Pep, I’m so sorry we woke you.” 

“You’re a moron sometimes, Tony.” Pepper didn’t meet his eyes, instead looking down at her hands. “You and Steve? Is this what you’ve been hiding from me? 

“Pepper…” Tony started to stand and then thought better of it, settling instead for perching on the edge of the cushion, his entire body angled in her direction. “I’m sorry. I’m _so_ sorry. You have no idea how much I wanted to tell you what was going on, keeping secrets from you _kills_ me. I just… I just, I couldn’t, you see?”

“No! I don’t see, Tony!” 

She was crying harder now, damn it. _This_ was why Tony evaded any and all conversations that had to do with human emotions – he was fucking terrible at them. He’d seen Pepper Potts withstand some pretty terrible things without shedding a tear…. For her to break down about this… 

Could lying to her about Steve really be so bad?

“I’ve…” Pepper sniffed, wiping the tears from beneath her eyes with carefully manicured fingernails, “Oh, god. I’m bawling like a stupid teenager. This is _awful_.” A few seconds more and she was breathing in deep, smooth motions, trying to swallow the hitch in her throat. “I just… let me just…”

That was it – decreased lung capacity or not, Tony was going to give her some privacy. He took the mask off and inhaled experimentally – then stood and waited, one hand resting on the canister before he was confident enough to move away.

“Let me get you a drink,” Tony offered, heading to the bar. He looked over the bottles, not wanting anything sweet (or sour, or too romantic, or containing strawberries) he made up a pair of martinis, adding a hint of Vermouth and filling Pepper’s glass to the brim with olives. While he worked, Pepper slipped into the bathroom and, in that way all elegant women always seem to manage, reappeared a few minutes later looking perfectly coifed save the slight smudge of her mascara.

Tony set the martini down in front of her nervously and settled himself on the coffee table beside it; close enough to touch her if he was given a hint of permission. Pepper downed a third of the drink in one swift gulp.

“I’m sorry, Tony,” she managed, coughing slightly at the burn. “That was really… that was so inappropriate of me. Completely unprofessional.”

She took another healthy sip of her drink and Tony decided he felt safe enough to reach out and rest his hand on her knee.

“I’m sorry, too,” Tony said softly. “That wasn’t how I wanted you to find out.”

Pepper laughed at that, and the laugh had a hard edge to it. “Well, if it were up to you, I wouldn’t have found out at all.”

“That’s… not true. It’s not, Pep.”

“I just wish you’d …” she looked away from him again, out the massive plate glass windows at the sharp twinkle of the Empire State building’s fancy new LED lighting. “Tony, this has been really hard for me. I know that sounds selfish when I’m the one who broke it off, but…”

“Pepper-”

“Let me finish!” she frowned, still not looking at him. 

Tony forced himself to subside, uncomfortable. Hearing her out at this point was the least he could do, especially considering he still wasn’t sure why she was actually upset – there were too many variables at work. 

“When I ended us, I tried to give you space. I figured you’d need it, what with the Avengers consuming so much of your free time, and how… intense… things were between us towards the end. I watched from a distance as you grew close to your teammates and focused your attention on the Initiative instead of SI. I thought… I don’t know, I guess I thought it was good for you, even though it meant SI was a bit neglected. I was glad you weren’t lonely anymore, and it wasn’t so scary to think of you taking on all the bad guys with an incredible team like that beside you.” 

That meant a lot – Pepper, of all people, knew how scary the bad guys could be.

She turned her gaze to him at _last_ and he felt the edge of her words like a knife to the gut. “It just hurts, Tony. You mean so much to me even now, you’ve been one of the most important things in my life for _years_. Now you don’t even trust me enough to tell me when something good comes into your life. You’re with _Captain America_ and you didn’t… even…”

Tony felt the air leave his lungs and set a hand on the oxygen tank, uncertain if the breathless sensation was physical or emotional…. Like the panic attacks, all over again. “Pepper,” he whispered, giving up on self-control completely and slipping onto the couch next to her. “You… that’s how I feel, too. I miss you so much, every single day. It’s not the dating that I miss – I mean, that was great, but just… us. I miss us, like _this_. Laughing, smiling, you being, I don’t know, _you_ …”

Her eyes flicked downwards, hands tightening around the stem of her glass. Tony had always loved those hands, the delicate, long fingers and carefully kept nails. Pepper’s hands were soft femininity coupled with the brutal capability, and he loved the efficiency with which she used them to juggle a thousand different things all at once. 

“Why didn’t you tell me you were seeing Steve?” Pep asked. “I can tell that he means more to you than the endless string of society women you’ve been parading around lately.”

She’d noticed that, too – shit. There wasn’t much dignity for the ex-girlfriend in that situation, was there?

Pepper’s eyes were welling up again. Tony wanted to wrap himself around her but he couldn’t lift his arms above his shoulders, so he settled for slipping one hand alongside hers, letting her lace her fingers with his.

“I lied to you because Steve asked me to,” Tony said – and there it was, laid out bare, sounding just as pathetic and ridiculous as he felt. 

He should never have gotten himself into this in the first place – he should have insisted that Pepper be let in on the ground floor. God, Tony was a shitty human being.

Frowning, Pepper’s brows pinched. “But… why? Steve doesn’t trust me?”

“He’s the most deeply closeted dude I’ve ever met, Pep. He’s afraid that people knowing about us will change their perception of him.”

“You mean _nobody_ knows?” Pepper asked, the pain in her expression taking on an entirely new dimension. Tony wasn't at all surprised when her next thought is completely selfless. “Tony, that’s awful! What about the team?”

“I don’t know, Pep, I can’t explain it! He’s pretty much every terrible 1950’s anti-gay PSA you’ve ever seen rolled into human form and slapped with an American flag. He’s intractable, there’s no arguing with him at all.”

“But…. the Avengers _live_ here! Not to mention, they put their lives into your hands every time you fight. Why make you lie to the people you care about?” 

“He didn’t _make_ me,” Tony denied, before backtracking with a wince. “Well, not really. He just… we made up ground rules and both of us agreed. At first it was just a hooking up kind of thing, and then it kind of… went on from there. I guess we’re kind of dating? I really have no fucking clue if that’s what I should call it, since Captain Repression won’t touch me in public, or let the rest of the team know what’s going on (though I think Natasha figured it out and Bruce is brilliant so he probably knows) or tell me he loves me, though I kind of think he might….”

Pepper squeezed his fingers tight, her expression edging close to pity. God, he hated that look. He took another drink, letting the bitter slide of vodka distract him until her expression grew too difficult to ignore.

“Stop – stop giving me that look! It’s my own damn fault, anyway. I _need_ him, Pep. I just – … I just do. I don’t want to lose him over something stupid. ”

Holy shit, that might have been the most honest sentence to ever fall out of Tony Stark’s mouth. If he’d talked like this to Pepper when they were an item they might never have broken up in the first place.

“This isn’t stupid, Tony. Steve’s making decisions that isolate you from your friends… He may not mean to, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is _really unhealthy._ ”

“Relationships are about compromise….”

“So what is _he_ doing for _you_?” she asked, hotly.

Tony let out a sharp laugh; he couldn’t believe she even needed to ask. “Putting up with all my shit, obviously. The man deserves a fucking medal.”

“Wrong answer,” Pepper corrected sharply, turning to face Tony squarely. She set down her glass and lifted one gentle hand to his cheek, her brow furrowed as though she were trying to make sense of a particularly confusing bit of handwriting. “Listen to me, Tony.”

“Pepper…”

“No,” she said again, emphatically. “ _Listen_. Steve is incredibly lucky to have you in his life. You gave the guy a home, a team, your family is directly responsible for his super soldier status… if that weren't enough, he has your heart in his hands. That heart isn’t something you give away to just anyone; and believe me, that I know for certain. Why do you always do this? You never think you deserve to be happy.”

Her thumb swept under his eye, framing his face with softness. He leaned into the touch - and when he managed to speak, his voice was entirely too tired to be convincing. “I _am_ happy, Pep.”

“No,” Pepper murmured, sadly. “You’re not. You're no happier than I am”

She squeezed his fingers softly while Tony studied their interlocked hands rather than her face. 

Pep sighed. “I guess I just… I always pegged Steve for a real honor-bound sort of guy, the Tough But Fair type. Think, Tony. What gives him the right to tell you what you can and can’t tell the people close to you?”

Tony blinked. “Well,” he started, and then hesitated as he chose his words. “I care about him, Pep. I don’t think anyone will benefit from forcing him out of the closet before he’s ready. And anyway, what if I pressure him and he… ” He trailed off, voice sounding small, but Pepper – wise, wonderful Pepper – knew exactly how the sentence ended anyway.

“If he breaks things off because he can’t handle you being honest with the people you care about, he’s _not_ the kind of person you should be dating, Tony. I don’t care how many stars and stripes he’s wearing, that’s neither upstanding _nor_ fair. He can stay in the closet publically and still share his life with his team,” Pepper said, eyes flashing. “And he should be willing to do it if that’s what it takes to make you happy. You really don’t see anything wrong with this situation?”

“Life’s not fair, Pep,” Tony huffed a laugh, then a groan. “Really. It’s fine. He might change his mind, you never know.”

Pepper shook her head. 

“So, uh, there’s that,” Tony said, lamely, reaching for his martini to take the edge off the pain. “my life is still a train wreck, everyone is shocked. _Now_ , you can’t seriously expect me to believe a little interpersonal angst brought the gorgeous Pepper Potts to tears. Whose ass do I need to kick over in Tokyo?”

Now it was Pepper’s turn to wince and look away. “Actually…. nobody’s. I think we just lost the contract. The, uh, the conference call didn’t go well.”

Tony’s expression blackened. “Excuse me? There’s some _other_ multinational company marrying green tech with handheld devices they’d rather contract with? That’s bullshit.”

She sighed. “That’s what I thought, but they’ve had a rep at the LA campus for the last two months and they’ve pulled him out; he’s on a flight first thing tomorrow morning.”

Tony growled. “I got this, Pep. Put me on a plane, you know the Japanese love me.”

“I’m not sure that ‘love’ is the right word,” Pepper managed, but he could see the hint of a smile on her lips. “You definitely make an impression, though. Are you sure? What about the Avengers?”

“Of course I’m sure – Cap’ll bench me anyway, might as well put the time to good use. I keep trying to explain to him that the suit’s pretty much the world’s best full-body cast, but he seems to think injuries are an acceptable reason to bench me.”

“Tony,” Pepper giggled and he grinned, stealing one of her olives.

“Let me do some damage control. I read … well, _most_ of the contracts when I signed them in the hospital, I can cover the rest on the plane. You’re obviously under a lot of stress, I bet the board is breathing down your next over this after all the headway Apple made in the mobile markets in Asia last year…. Let me do this for you. Please?”

Now Pepper _was_ smiling. “I can’t believe you actually read those, I always figured you’d just sign anything I set in front of you. But – you’re exactly right. And frankly, I don’t think having a female CEO participate in the negotiations is helping matters. It’s just so frustrating, I’m good at my job and I _know_ I’m good at my job, but some of these people just can’t see past the skirt. It’s barbaric.”

“I’ll say,” Tony agreed, rubbing his thumb across her knuckles comfortingly. “Though typically it is a _lovely_ skirt, I often have difficult looking past it.”

She swatted his arm. “You mean it? You’ll go?”

“As soon as I’m cleared for travel,” Tony promised and meant it.

“Oh, thank you, Tony. That would be incredibly helpful, incredibly.” Pepper leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “If you’ll handle the Fujikawa contract it’ll finally have enough time freed up to – wait, Tony, you’re _drinking_?!”

Oops. Evidently the distraction provided by his dysfunctional love life had expired. He glanced at his near-empty martini glass and blinked. “Um. Yes?”

“Tony, are you crazy?! With the amount of painkillers you’re on?! Give me that!” Pepper snatched away the glass. “We can talk about Tokyo in the morning. You’re tired, and I’ve no intention of letting you take your evenings meds _now_.”

“But Pepper,” Tony whined. “ _Pepper_! My ribs!”

“You should have thought of that before downing three ounces of vodka,” she said, pursing her lips stubbornly. “Bed. If you pass out on the couch I’m just gonna leave you here – there’s no way I can get your sorry backside all the way to the master suite, and I’m sure as hell not calling _Steve._ ”

“Oh, to be a fly on the wall for _that_ conversation…” Tony waxed, allowing her to help him to his feet. She poured the remains of his drink into her own before escorting him into the bedroom, then stayed long enough to unbutton his shirt and finish Steve’s work on his socks.

 _God, I love that woman,_ thought Tony, as she dimmed the lights and tiptoed from the bedroom.

...........................

The curtains on his bedroom’s massive window swished open at just past ten, letting in an absolutely obscene amount of sunlight. “Sir,” JARVIS intoned. “I regret to inform you that a physical altercation is at present occurring on the tower’s seventy first floor.

“Mmzuh?” Tony asked, rolling his head blearily. Everything hurt - _everything._ It felt as though he’d been hit by a steamroller; his entire torso throbbed, and every twinge of every muscle attached thereto sent waves of agony rolling through him. His brain blearily provided images free of context – he vaguely recalled himself yelling at Steve, falling against a wall, stealing Pepper’s olives. Was this a hangover? How much had he drunk?

Tony Stark was no stranger to pain, but he had to admit that broken ribs were the second worst thing he’d ever been subjected to..... the worst, of course, was having his sternum half-removed in a cave in the desert and a battery casing crammed into his chest cavity.

“Alter…cation?” Tony mumbled, attempting to bring his brain on line. The mechanics of his physical body were painfully low in lubricants – he needed coffee, stat, and possible a shot or five of his best whiskey. “Shit. Hulk?”

“No, sir. Dr. Banner appears to have slept on the couch in his lab.”

“Good man,” Tony would have nodded his approval if his neck weren’t so stiff. “In that case, details and replay please, JARVIS. Is there coffee?”

“Ms. Potts left some on; it’s been warming for 3.4 hours, sir.”

“It’s probably soupy as hell,” Tony attempted to roll out of bed and was rewarded with another gut-wrenching stab of pain. “Ohfuck, JARVIS, you get the plates on the bus that hit me?”

“That would me the Magnum Grey Goose, sir.”

“Fuuuuuck,” Tony reiterated. “And my meds?”

“Confiscated by Ms. Potts until proven sobriety.”

“God damn it. Where’s Pep?”

As he struggled to sit, a video feed popped up on the window which answered every question thus far unanswered – Pepper Potts, expensive heels planted in what could only be Steve’s plush living room carpet, her hair pulled back in a French twist and her mouth twitched into a frown. JARVIS picked up the conversation mid-feed.

_”You should be ashamed of yourself!”_

_Steve’s face was caught somewhere between ‘mortified’ and ‘irritated’. “Ms. Potts, please. Tony chose to help support my delicate position - ”_

_“Delicate position?! You’re the most indelicate person I’ve met, Steve – you can survive anything! I think you can handle a little coming out speech!”_

_“You don’t understand-“ Steve looked genuinely pained, running a hand through his hair and mussing it in a way Tony found exceptionally attractive. “I’m_ Captain America! _”_

 _“You’re an_ ass _!” Pepper corrected, and slapped Steve across the face._

“Oh my god,” Tony blurted, jaw dropping open. “Did Pep just slap Captain America? Holy _shit!_ ”

_The blow was ineffectual of course; Pepper might hit the gym on a regular basis but Steve was superpowered – the slap left nothing more than a faint pink flush across his cheek. Steve jerked away, entire body coiled and tense, but he didn’t move to strike back. He was too good for that._

_Or maybe he just knew he deserved it._

_Pepper continued on, ignoring his posture. “How selfish are you? Did you really think your decisions wouldn’t affect the rest of us? Tony is my best friend, has been for the better part of a decade, and you _asked him to lie to me?_ How dare you!”_

_“I just suggested-“_

Yeah, Steve was definitely looking ragged. Tony abruptly realized he was still lying in bed and hauled himself upright, ignoring the agony in his ribcage. Standing was an entirely new dimension of pain, and he found his stiff arms struggling to tighten the drawstring of his red silk pajama pants - that must have been Pepper's doing, another thing he couldn't quite remember. He yanked on the cord as best he could and hoped he wouldn’t lose them in his dash to the elevator.

JARVIS, brilliant, wonderful JARVIS, splashed the feed up on every screen in the living room as Tony limped through, and had it playing on the wall of the elevator when the doors slid open.

 _“Here’s a clue for you, Steve,” Pepper glared. “Tony places the approval of those he cares about over anything – and I do mean ANYTHING – else in his life. He’ll bend over backwards to give the people he cares about what they want, or even what he happens to think they want. He_ adores _you – if lying is what it takes to earn your approval, it’s not a choice at all.”_

_“MISS POTTS,” Steve roared at last, reaching out as though he wanted to grab Pepper by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. She took a half-step back, instinctively, as he loomed over her._

_“I realize that my choices may appear selfish,” he managed, once Pepper was quiet for long enough that he could elaborate. “but you have to understand. I’m a_ symbol _\- just a symbol, not a man. My private life has absolutely no place in the circus ring that is modern media - I struggle daily to stay out of political entanglements, out of _anything_ that would allow lobbyists to capitalize on my name. Being Captain America is more than just, than just - labels._

_With that said, Steve seemed to realize he was encroaching into her space and let his hands fall pitifully to his sides._

_“You honestly expect me to think that this isn’t about homophobia?” Pepper’s hands fell to her hips. “Because that’s a load of crap.”_

_“It’s not! It’s just – it’s not appropriate for – “_

_“I don’t care what’s appropriate,” Pepper jabbed a finger at his shoulder, “when it involves marginalizing and isolating a great man who happens to be madly in love with you.”_

_“Tony’s not in love with me,” Steve muttered, just loudly enough that the cameras could pick it up._

_“See?” Pepper asked, scathingly. “An absolute ass.”_

Steve turned away from Pepper as JARVIS cut the feed and the elevator doors slid open. This meant that he was staring straight down the hallway as Tony caught himself on the doorframe, the air in his chest compressing when Steve’s eyes met his own.

The expression there quickly slid from anger to horror.

“Tony!” Steve yelped, leaping into action.

Afterwards when Tony reviewed the tapes (as he was wont to do compulsively when important conversations like these happened with the walls of the Tower) he’d marvel that he hadn’t noticed what rotten shape he’d been in. His hair was sleep-rumpled, the bandage on his head having slipped free in the night. He’d lost a few other gauze patches, too, and several of those remaining were stained through with dark red blood where his fall the previous evening had torn the cuts open. On top of that, the absolutely horrific mottling of bruises across his flesh made his torso resemble a pulpy, overripe plum. The lack of painkillers meant that he was hunched in on himself, one hand pressed tightly against his ribcage, the other clawing at the doorway to prop his body up.

“Steve,” Tony managed, as the other man came to him and slid an arm around his shoulder supportively. The pain that shuddered through him left Tony gasping, pressing his face into Steve’s arm as he sucked in air.

“Oh god, he – oh, shit, his meds!” He heard Pepper say, vaguely. “And those stitches… Steve, do you have a first aid kit?”

A lesser man than Steve might have responded cattily to that – but Steve just shook his head. “I’m sorry. I haven’t any need, I don't have one handy....”

“I’ll get one from upstairs. Get him sitting, but slowly - he was having trouble breathing last night,” she ordered, then vanished with a click of heels into the elevator.

“Trouble breathing?!” Steve asked, genuine fear in his voice. Tony tilted his head, groaning. 

“Shouldn’t have had that nightcap,” he admitted, grudgingly. 

“You were drinking? Pepper let you _drink_?!”

“Fuck,” Tony mumbled; this was not going according to plan. “No one _let me drink_ , Steve. And Pep confiscated my pills when she realized I’d had a glass.” 

He felt Steve exhale, half through the shift of his body and half through the puff of air rifling his hair. Then, slowly, they started to move through the hallway and into the great glassed-in living room. 

Steve’s room faced east and was warm and sunny at this time of day, all honey-colored wood and creamy tans and greens. Tony hadn’t spent much time in here, but it still felt familiar; the leathery smell of the couches reminded him of Steve, and the Captain America shield sat on the coffee table next to a buffing rag.

Tony settled onto one of the dining room chairs and Steve knelt next to him, an odd repetition of their position the night before. Tony let his eyes focus on Steve, feeling almost giddy with pain.

“Pepper hit you,” he whispered, reaching out to touch Steve’s cheek. The pink mark had faded entirely, but Steve flinched away as Tony placed his fingers where her hand had struck. “JARVIS woke me when she hit you, I saw the feed. I’m sorry, Steve, I’m so sorry – I didn’t mean for her to find out, I didn’t even think to access the alarms, she was there for a call and decided to sleep over and I just didn’t think - ”

“Shh,” Steve answered, edging closer and leaning in to kiss the top of Tony’s knee. “Breathe slowly, I know it hurts. I know you didn’t know, Tony. You’ve worked hard to keep this between us and I’m sorry I expected you too. I shouldn’t have come up uninvited, I knew Miss Potts brought you home – I just assumed she was gone.”

“It was my fault,” Tony’s voice was gravelly and his breath probably smelled as awful as it tasted. "Mine."

“No,” Steve murmured, tightly, as he ran a thumb under one of Tony’s remaining bandages. “It really wasn’t. We need to talk about that, Tony, but I want to take care of you first. You’re bleeding - may I strip these off and look at your cuts?”

“Mmmhmm,” Tony groaned and tipped his head back against the back of the chair as Steve set about pulling away the adhesive and examining his sutures with pursed lips and careful fingers.

Pepper returned with the first aid kit and dispensed Tony’s painkillers with a glass of orange juice – he downed them in one shot.

“Down in one, down in one,” he managed to quip – and was rewarded with a flicker of a smile across her face. He reached out for her hand, pulled it to his mouth, kissed it. “Miss Potts, you’re an angel.”

She snorted and he met her eyes; something in his expression must have tipped her off, because his next words didn't surprise her at all. 

“I ah. I owe Steve a conversation, Pep.”

Leaning in to kiss his forehead, Pepper nodded. “I’ve got a meeting in half an hour anyway. Tony…” her eyes flickered to Steve, then back to him. “Please be careful. I’ll call to check in.”

“Love you,” he said, and she smiled gently.

"Love you, too."

With that she left him alone with Steve and the massive, awkward silence that stretched between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. [I have pretty much been listening to this on repeat for the last three chapters.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Izwo-6ChSgc)
> 
> 2\. [The anti-gay 1950's PSA Tony mentions. Just saying.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmqNiFJyI28)
> 
> 3\. Feeeeeeeeeelings!!


	4. War Wounds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPOILERS FOR IRON MAN THREE. They are there. You have been warned!

Steve and Pepper were Different.

Pepper was fiery strength, determination, outspoken and covered in sharp edges where Steve was smooth, rounded, and stoic. Pepper was vocal in her disapproval, flaring up when she felt a little heat was needed; Steve was cool as the solid vibranium of his shield, immovable as a pillar. 

Where Pepper rushed, Steve settled. The intensity of focus was the same, but the execution _vastly_ different… and Tony couldn’t say that he preferred one to the other. All he knew was that the scientist in him marveled at the way their approaches, their fundamentally different temperaments, and their affections evidently intersected with _him._

That two so utterly different people could find shared ground in a dysfunctional engineer was kind of amazing, really.

Steve carried Tony to the bedroom – or, more accurately, carried the chair in which he sat into the bedroom. He settled it gently on the carpet and let Tony wave off his help while transferring his aching body from the chair to the bed… it was a small thing, but hey, Tony still had his dignity.

The overdue conversation hung in the air between them like a bomb about to drop. Tony – avoidant even in his most responsible moods – let it wait. Steve seemed to be content enough with that solution, padding back into the kitchen and returning with a steaming washcloth and a bowl. He surveyed Tony’s torso with a clinical eye and said, as though reciting from their mandatory first aid training handbook: “Stitches should remain dry and covered if at all possible. I think I can work around them – may I?”

“Uh,” Tony shivered slightly at the thought of Steve’s hands on him. “Knock yourself out.” 

Steve took the warm cloth first to Tony’s fingers, starting with the ball of his thumb and working up, cracking a knuckle here or there as he worked out the strain. From there he started on the arm, gently peeling away the taped patches of gauze and inspecting those where the blood had seeped through for signs that stitches were torn. He neatly cleaned around wounds, leaving neat little squares of iodine-stained skin surrounding the cuts. 

How could someone so big be so gentle? Steve’s hands dwarfed Tony’s, but there was dexterity to them an inventor couldn’t help but admire.

By the time the left hand was done and Steve began on the right, Tony felt his eyelids sagging. Tiredly, he allowed himself to lean into Steve’s weight, Steve’s warmth. 

Steve began washing his chest, moving very, very carefully around the stitches; when the rag came away a sticky iodine brown Steve carefully wrung it out and doused it again with hot water – just enough to be comforting rather than painful. 

Tony might actually never move again – this was about as close to heaven as he thought he’d ever get.

At length, Steve tapped him on an unscathed patch of shoulder. “I’ll get your back, then you can lay down,” he murmured, softly.

The bed dipped as he set a knee behind Tony’s hips and suddenly there was another cloth sweeping up Tony’s neck, rubbing little circles behind his ears, down his back and across the curve beneath his shoulder blades.

“Tony,” Steve asked at length, pressing a kiss to the juncture of neck and spine, “Why did you and Miss Potts… end things?”

Okay, _that_ was not the question Tony had been expecting while Steve was basically giving him the world’s sexiest sponge bath. It jerked him out of his reprieve and he felt Steve smooth a calming hand across his back as though trying to sweep the wrinkles out of a tucked sheet.

“What do you mean?” Tony asked, suspiciously.

Steve’s hands stilled momentarily and then started working at a knot on Tony’s left shoulder blade. It felt fantastic - who knew Captain America had such a manipulative streak? “You obviously love one another.” 

Tony was silent for a long moment, head lolling to one side as Steve worked at a knot. Of course he loved Pepper – Pepper was _Pepper_ , stable and good and brutally effective. “Sometimes it takes more than love, Steve.”

“Does it?” 

“Yeah.” Tony closed his eyes rather than rolling them – Steve had a romantic streak, though not one wide enough to force him out of the closet. When his eyes opened he looked away, out Steve’s window across the skyline and distant smudges of the east river. “Look, Steve, sometimes…. sometimes someone can be everything you want and nothing you need. That was Pepper and me.”

Steve’s hands slowed and Tony wondered if he was thinking about Peggy…. He never talked about the woman he’d fallen for during the war, but Tony knew she crossed his mind. He always got this funny look on his face when he was thinking about “home”.

The washcloth slid across his obliques and Steve stopped at the edge of his pajama pants.

“Let’s take these off,” he murmured in Tony’s ear, as if Tony wasn’t clinging to concentration and ability for rational thought.

“ _Really?_ ” Tony asked sharply; he felt vulnerable enough bare while Steve sat, fully clothed, and took inventory of his cuts and bruises. 

“Yeah. I think you’ll feel better one we’ve gotten you cleaned up. Are you cold?” 

“No… just…”

“This is the closest you’ll come to a shower today,” Steve reminded him, and Tony winced. “I’ll behave,” he added, as though Tony was capable of doubting his intentions. Steve was Captain America – he was the last person on earth to cop a feel when a guy was down for the count.

Tony rolled his shoulders in silent acquiescence.

Steve slid a hand down his back and beneath the waistband of his pants, then lifted Tony gently. Tony hooked his fingers into the fabric and slid the red silk pajamas down the curve of his aching body. The hiss of soft fabric across his skin would generally have left Tony with a raging hard on – but between the pain meds and the stress of the conversation, it wasn’t an issue. 

Tony was mildly put out by that. It made him feel old.

He kept talking, mostly to distract himself. “Maybe it just wasn’t the right time. Maybe there was never going to be a right time,” Tony sucked on the inside of his lip, and sighed. “That’s not really an answer, sorry. She ended it, but I sort of got why.”

The cloth slid lower, scrubbing gently across his hips where the bruises formed literal rainbows of color. Steve spoke again at length, voie quiet. “I guess that’s as much as you can hope for… I’m sorry; I’m trying to decide what to say. I don’t have a lot of experience in the relationship department. This is kind of new territory for me.”

 _No shit, Sherlock,_ thought Tony. “Yeah, well. Neither do I, honestly.”

Steve proceeded to carefully wash Tony’s backside before coming around again and running the cloth up and down his thighs. It was kind of incredible how Steve made an act so intimate feel comfortable – then again, he’d probably been pressed into service in field hospitals on occasion, so maybe this was par for the course.

“Was it because of Extremis?”

Steve kept up with all of SHIELD’s active case files; Tony was unsurprised that he knew the details of the fight with the Mandarin. “Partly. Look, Pepper is … you don’t really know her. I don’t feel right talking to you about what she’s been dealing with, Steve. I’ll just say that if dating someone led directly to your being abducted and unwillingly transformed into an unstable human time bomb, you’d probably do some soul searching too. Are you jealous of Pep?”

Steve winced and Tony felt his stomach go sour at the hesitant response. “I…. no.”

“That’s not gonna work out well for us, Steve.”

At the implied threat in Tony’s voice the other man straightened, frowning. “No, I mean it. I didn’t realize how much she cared about you until this morning – she hauled off and hit me because she thought I was hurting you. I just… wondered. If she loves you that much, maybe I’ve underestimated her.”

“I’ve no doubt you have – everyone does. Pep gets all the gorgeous woman stereotypes and the ginger stereotypes too; it’s actually pretty rare for someone to meet her and size her up correctly. You’d probably like her if you managed a civil conversation – you two could bake cookies and bond over your mutually terrible taste in men. It’d be fun.” Tony shrugged – or rather, tried to shrug. When the roll of his stiff shoulders didn’t immediately result in agony he knew the meds were kicking in. Thank _god._

Steve kissed the inside of Tony’s knee and worked the cloth down to his feet. Tony was starting to think he had a thing for that or something…. three times in 12 hours seemed extreme.

“Before the war…” 

At that, Tony went still. It wasn’t often that Steve talked about _before_ \- usually when he did, it was only to correct some gross misconception his teammates held about the thirties and forties. Nostalgia was only possible when grieving had ended, and Steve was nowhere near finished processing the losses his 70 year sleep had created.

“When I was, you know, smaller…. I got knocked around a lot.” 

(God, it was funny wasn’t it; how could Steve really be embarrassed by the way he used to look? As if America hadn’t heard/watched/read/enthusiastically embraced his story a thousand times over in comics and movies and tv miniseries…) 

“There were a few guys that lived at St. John’s who would follow me around outside, call me names, pick fights.”

“Bullies,” Tony murmured sympathetically, reaching out to scratch his fingers across Steve’s scalp, mussing his perfect hair. 

Steve tensed, dropping his eyes and looking down at his own hands. The fingers holding the damp rag tensed until water dripped through them and pattered against the top of Tony’s left foot. “You know I hate bullies – any kind of bully, big or small. And I _hated_ these kids – I mean, really, really loathed them. Each time they called me puny or scrawny I turned around and picked another fight whether or not they were around to see it. I guess part of me believed that letting someone beat me up just one more time might convince them I wasn’t a wimp...”

Steve huffed out a little self-admonishing laugh at himself and Tony felt his heart break just that much more. “Well, look who got the last laugh,” he tried for a joke, only to find Steve shaking his head beneath Tony’s outstretched fingers, expression focused.

“There was this one day when my lip was split pretty bad. One of the kids laughed and told me a I looked like a swish and a nancyboy and it stuck - from then on it was always nancy boy, sissy, lady-lips, Steve Broad-gers, the whole nine yards.”

Tony tightened his fingers, hating to think of any version of Steve in pain. “They were just kids, Steve. Bullies are one thing that hasn't changed in the last seventy years – kids can be cruel.” He paused, corrected himself. “People can be cruel.”

“I don’t care,” Steve snapped, then backpedaled sheepishly, “I mean, I know that, but I cared anyway. People like that represented everything I thought was wrong in the world, and I couldn’t stand the idea of them being _right_ about something, right about me.” Steve dropped his head to Tony’s bare leg, huffing a sigh across his knee. 

“Right?” Tony asked. “They were never right about you, Steve. You’re infinitely more than – “

“No, I mean, right in that I was interested in… wasn’t just interested in ladies. I was afraid that if they were right about that, they might be right about everything else, too – and maybe I wasn’t any better than them, any more moral or correct, and where did that leave me?”

Tony opened his mouth and shut it again, wordless for once.

“I hated that they saw enough of it in me to call me those kinds of names. Of all the people out in my life, it was those jokers who looked at me and saw what was really there – something the serum _didn’t_ change.”

“That right there,” Tony rolled his hand nervously, “should tell you everything. The serum didn’t change what didn’t need changing. It supersized your body to match your mind, but left the whole sexuality bit out - _because it doesn't matter._ You’re telling me Captain America won’t come out of the closet because some long-dead orphan brats called him names?”

Steve’s face crumpled and Tony knew he’d gone too far. “I mean, I just mean, Steve, they’re gone. You don’t have to step around that kind of abuse anymore. Those kids were the product of their circumstances, and while that doesn’t mean they weren’t total dumbasses it does mean that they didn’t have any reason to believe what they were saying beyond the fact that they must have known it ruffled your feathers. Kids smell blood in the water, they’re worse than sharks, you shoulda seen my freshman year at MIT. Feeding frenzy doesn’t even begin to… you know, okay, that was tangential, I guess I just meant…. You shouldn’t let them bring you down. Don’t let those assholes control the decisions you make decades down the line.”

HAH. How had he even said that with a straight face after this many years of knee-jerking at Howard’s ideas? _Do as I say, not as I do_ at its finest.

Steve started rubbing his feet again, speaking softly.

“You know it’s more than that. What if I did come out? What if everyone learns Captain America is attracted to men and suddenly half the country I’m supposed to be protecting wants to string me up?”

“Then you’ll fight in their name anyway, because it’s the right thing to do, and you’ll come home to your gloriously handsome billionaire boyfriend in the evenings? Do you need me to remind you how full of shit they are on a regular basis? Because that I can definitely do.”

“What if this... whatever this is between us goes to hell and everyone in the whole fucking world knows I couldn’t make it work with you?”

That left Tony scrambling for words. “In... in all honesty, no one would be surprised that another of my relationships imploded,” Tony would have laughed if he weren’t so miserable. “so I wouldn't worry about that reflecting on _you_. But you could come out without announcing we’re a Thing, see what people say, and then go from there. Please…. Please don’t cut me out of your life because you’re afraid we’ll fail. I’ve done that before, and it’s… it’s kind of a stupid fucking decision, Steve.”

Steve leaned in, forehead resting on Tony’s knee. “Being Captain America is what I live for. I can’t prioritize anything over that, even you.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m just saying it’s not a black and white decision – and I think you’re grossly overestimating how much the public will care. We’re moving into a golden age of indifference, Cap. Gays in the military, marrying left and right, in a few generations people are gonna look back at Westboro Baptist the same way we look back on white supremacists in the 1950’s and think _damn!_ Not to mention, do you know what a hero you'd be to all the scrawny kids out there who might still be thinking there's something wrong with them? That's a hell of a thing to be.”

“I don't think I can be that role model like this," Steve said, uncertainly. "Not when I don’t want to be this way. Not when I'm too embarrassed to interact with you in public in case somebody notices what's going on. Not when I want to be normal.”

_Normal?!_

Tony felt like he’d been punched in the gut; the painkillers didn’t help at all with that kind of hurt. He pulled his hands away from Steve’s face, and at his withdrawal Steve lifted his face and scanned his eyes up to Tony’s. 

“Christ, Steve. Thanks a fucking lot, way to pull your punches there.”

“I didn’t mean…” Steve seemed to realize how that had sounded and spread his hands. “I didn’t mean it like that, it’s just that things would be easier if I was.... I love being _with_ you - ”

“You just wish you weren’t,” Tony finished for him, flatly. A cold knot tightened in his chest; it felt a little bit like the arc reactor casing used to, heavy and hard and foreign. He lifted a hand and rubbed at the scar tissue at his partially reconstructed sternum, sucking in oxygen to ground himself.

Steve settled back on his heels, pressing a hand to his forehead. “Look, I’m just trying to be honest, here. I’m trying to tell you that I don’t think I can be the kind of guy you need. Pepper’s right – you shouldn’t have to… to hide, or to front, or to be anything other than what you deserve to be on my account…”

Tony was bone-tired, the kind of weariness that sets in when an argument gets circular and refuses to die. Steve was an immovable object; common sense could lash against him all day long without making a dent.

So instead of yelling, instead of pushing or shoving or storming out Tony spoke, each word devoid of emotion. 

“Pepper isn’t me, Steve. Pepper thinks she knows what’s best, but she doesn’t get to make that kind of decision for me unless she’s the chick that’s dumping me.” Then, realizing what he’d just said, he added in a small voice: “are…. wait, are you dumping me?”

Steve stared at Tony, and Tony stared back.

“Steve,” Tony managed, heart pounding in his ears. His temples were throbbing. “Are you…”

“I don’t know,” Steve said, miserably. “I don’t know what to do.”

Tony swallowed, then stood. It hurt to move, but in a stiff way rather than a spiking pain way, which was a good sign. At least he’d be able to make it to the elevator with the shreds of his dignity.

“Tony, where are you –“

“I’m leaving.”

“What?”

“I said I’m leaving,” Tony mustered up the energy for a glare. “I don’t know this Steve Rogers – I want the scrawny Steve Rogers who stood back up each time those assholes knocked him down. You’re still giving those kids power over you, and that’s pathetic – that’s not the Steve I know.”

“Tony, you don’t understand what it was like, hiding it there, hiding it in the army, living 95% of my life being told that I’m – “

“No, I don’t know what it was like – but _then_ isn’t _now_ , Steve! You may be just as much a product of the 30’s and 40’s as those kids, but things change! You wrapped your head around touch screens and Air Jordans and The Price Is Right, what makes this different? You’ve wading so deep in denial that you’re getting swept away, and you’re too busy being consumed with self-pity to realize you have absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about,” Tony reached for his pants, the stretch making his chest throb.

Hmmm. Stalking out in a huff might be more difficult than he thought. He took a deep breath (ow, ow, ow) and stepped away from Steve.

“Are we…?” Steve started, as if he didn’t know what to ask.

 _That_ made Tony angry. They’d been fine – they’d been awkward but they’d been fine, and now Steve had the nerve to make Tony decide what their status was? He loved the bastard, but he wasn’t enough of a sadist to make Steve linger where he didn’t want to be.

“You tell me, Mister I-Don’t-Want-To-Be-Here,” he snapped.

Steve flexed his fingers, stared at Tony, and then looked away. “I… I don’t know.”

“Well, let me know when you do.”

Standing naked in the elevator to the penthouse, Tony booked a flight to Narita. 

“We’re headed to Tokyo, J. Pack a bag.”

 

...........................

 

Back when Malibu had been Tony’s home base he’d grown accustomed to the (relatively) easy nine-hour flight from LAX to Tokyo. These days the jets were faster, but still. The extra three hours between New York and the west coast left him way too much time alone with his thoughts.

Tony ended up downing an Ambien and faceplanting in the retractable bed he’d installed when Pepper made him take out the stripper poles. Half an hour out of Narita, he broke the doctor’s orders and suited up, dropping out of the airlock-esque lower hold and entering Japanese air space on his own steam, leaving JARVIS to inform air traffic controllers and the Japanese SDF alike.

“Sir, I’m fairly certain the warning label of your Ambien precludes the operation of heavy machinery,” JARVIS observed, pithy as ever, while Tony was rocketing past the lights of Narita’s airstrips and over the Chiba hills towards Tokyo proper.

“We both know I could fly the suit in my sleep, JARVIS.”

“If by ‘I’ you mean me, sir, then absolutely. Still…”

“Well, you _are_ my better half…” Tony mused aloud; half wishing he’d given JARVIS the capability to laugh. “Seriously, it’ll be okay, J. Keep an eye on those vital readings… I need a little media buzz on my side before this meeting with Fujikawa.”

Soaring low over the tiled roofs of Asakusa, Tony spun a few loops around the spire of the five-tiered tower at Senso-ji and then shot down the Sumida river and over the harbor. He couldn’t resist showboating along the brightly lit Rainbow Bridge, very nearly causing a pileup on the upper and lower decks alike. From there, a quick pitstop at Tokyo Tower, looming over Zojo-ji, to tap on the glass and watch the shocked couples inside drop their bag in their haste to snap a photo of Iron Man, up close and personal.

Nobody loved Iron Man like the Japanese loved Iron Man… then again, they’d been dreaming about robot suits since Astroboy, so Tony knew how they felt. Maybe he'd dress the suit as a Gundam next Halloween, just to up his street cred in Tokyo...

Waving to the crowd plastered to the glass, Tony was confident that Iron Man’s presence in Tokyo would be a front-page headline tomorrow. He executed a handful of Spiderman-esque aerial backflips before shooting south for an early night.

Ten years ago Tony had gotten shithoused at a New Years party thrown by the Japanese consulate in LA and purchased two floors of a residential tower in Roppongi Hills. He hadn’t been to the site in years, but Pepper (glorious, tremendous, superlative Pepper) maintained it to his tastes. She’d even gone so far as to upgrade the balcony, which now boasted a retractable landing pad. It slid out of the building’s side as Tony approached withdrew back into the building with each step he took towards the exterior doors…doors that, being keyed to his biosignature, slid open in slick silence. 

Gorgeous.

Pepper had also seen to the interior décor, and the entire living area echoed with her influence. Tasteful artwork, understated accents, fountains and low, neutral Japanese furniture selections... it was infinitely better than one of the boutique hotels crammed into Ginza.

Best of all, sprawled comfortably on the couch with an Yebisu Black in hand was the only human being in the world who gave Pepper a run for her money in the Tony’s Favorite Person Ever category.

“Rhodey!” Tony grinned cracking the helmet and disengaging the armor with a quick gesture. It jetted away from his body, reforming itself like a sentinel next to the front door, where ~~Iron Patriot~~ War Machine was parked. 

Tony spread his arms in greeting. “Cream pie! Key lime! Chocolate -”

“You’re late,” Rhodey smirked. “Typical. Typically unsubtle, too…” 

The other man gestured with his beer, and Tony glanced over at the massive flat-screen embedded in the wall. The news was plastered with a barrage of snapshots taken by his tourist friends at Tokyo Tower – Iron Man waving, posing, high-fiving a little kid through the glass of the observation deck.

“Mission accomplished,” Tony laughed as he over to the bar and helped himself. He brought out an extra pair of bottles just to spare the pain of walking over again. 

Rhodey sipped his beer, watching Tony carefully. “You supposed to be flying? A little bird told me you were recently twitching and intubated.”

Tony cracked the beer. “Stories of my three-day medically induced coma were greatly exaggerated. Don’t mother me, gumdrop…. the suit taps my vitals, you know that. It wouldn’t have keyed up if it wasn't safe.”

“That true, JARV?”

“Theoretically,” JARVIS agreed. “Though, Sir, you may recall that upon takeoff I warned against strenuous acrobatics…”

“Oh, did you? I didn’t – “

“…and the consumption of alcohol, given your current dose of pain killers and/or sleep aids….”

“You know what, JARVIS, you can just stop helping my case, thanks.”

“Of course, sir,” said the AI, all feigned politeness. Bastard.

“Tony,” Rhodey said, warningly.

“It’s just a beer! God, Rhodey, give me this much, I’ve had a hell of a day.”

Rhodey studied the bags under his eyes along with the stiff way he walked.... and evidently decided this fight wasn’t worth fighting. Instead of harping on about the beer, he pursed his lips and raised a brow. “Alright, alright. So what’s so important that you dragged me away from my four days of R&R in Guam?” 

“Now we’re talking,” Tony nodded, approvingly. “Pep’s having some trouble with a contract.”

Rhodey frowned. “Yeah?”

“She thinks there’s been a communications breakdown, and we’re here to break down the break down.”

“You needed me for this?”

“Mostly I just wanted to see your face,” Tony admitted, candidly. “But you know how the tech gurus here go gaga for robotics and cyber-enhancements. I want to show off the armor a bit, make it obvious we’re talking with Fujikawa, and hope the media’s speculation changes a few minds.”

“That I think I can manage,” Rhodey raised his beer in a toast. “To Pepper.”

“Damn straight,” Tony agreed, letting the clink of their bottles drive thoughts of Steve as far away as possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. [If you love me let me go back to that bar in Tokyo...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRhUIJextp8)


	5. Lost in Translation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a lot of F/M flirting in this chapter, someone being pressured for sex, and a little inappropriate drunk humor. nothing outrageous, but the warning is there.

Day one in Tokyo saw Tony wake up at noon, everything aching. The flight – and the jet lag, and the acrobatics, and the booze – had been way, _way_ too much for one day. He blearily ordered JARVIS to set up inquiries with the Fujikawa board, then attempted to roll over (fuck, ow, no, never mind), topped up his dose of painkillers, and fell back asleep.

Rhodey turned up at five with shrimp tempura udon and a request for car keys. Tony offered the custom-fit orange Lexus in the garage and then spent a few hours fiddling with his tablets in bed, sliding in and out of sleep, ignoring the two missed calls from Steve blinking up at him from his phone.

Day two in was better. Rhodey was sporting a particularly entertaining hangover from his night out in Shinjuku, and Tony was beginning to feel human again. Pepper (from afar, god, her arms were long) arranged a late meal with SI Tokyo staffers that ended up being surprisingly entertaining for a working lunch. SI Tokyo didn’t develop hardware, but R&D guys were R&D guys, and Tony liked talking shop. A few were noticeably star-struck by his presence (he hadn’t been to the Tokyo office in ages) but he wasn’t alone when it came to fan clubs…. Rhodey’s presidential save had resulted in a veritable media blitzkrieg, and Tony wasn’t the only guy around signing autographs.

Rhodey also read the writing on the wall and extended his personal leave so that he could stick around a few more days, thank god. What a champ.

After the luncheon and the fan-photos and the on-the-fly interview with a guy from Egg, Tony finally checked his voice mail. The first was nothing but hesitant silence and then the click of disconnection. The second was Steve’s voice, oddly impersonal over the phone – as if he was afraid of saying something that might give himself away. _”Stark, Steve calling. Just checking up on you – how are the ribs shaping up? Give me a call if you need anything or, uh, or want to talk? I’ll be around. Hope you’re feeling better. Ah… maybe I’ll speak with you later. If you want.”_ Click.

Tony growled “delete!” immediately and spent half an hour feeling terrible, then another half an hour debating returning the call. He even brought up his Steve-stimulator (haha, that sounded _so_ dirty) a.k.a. the CAP and had a ten-minute argument with it before shoving his tablet off the bed, burying his face in a pillow, and willing himself to sleep.

Day three in Tokyo was go-time. The morning involved the necessary introductions, gift exchanges, and social niceties that any major business negotiation required… all of which were ten times more elaborate and stratified than Tony was used to thanks to highly codified Japanese business traditions. 

Tony and Rhodey appeared (suited up, naturally) half an hour early and were summarily plied with tea, compliments, and a tour of the Fujikawa facilities. Wanting the impact that arriving in the suit guaranteed but unwilling to leave priceless tech unguarded in the headquarters of a potential rival business, Tony pre-loaded the suits with defensive software that dropped them into “bodyguard” mode the moment Tony and Rhodey were unloaded. The stern-faced iron warriors followed them around the building, boots clanking against metal, heads occasionally rotating at absurd angles to watch the motion of others in the building… a completely unnecessary touch given that their heat-seeking sensors were located below the shoulder hydraulic units, but it did give Tony the satisfaction of watching the occasional hapless intern jump in terror when Iron Man glanced his way.

They caused no small commotion – and no fewer than seven people dared get close enough for the Facebook photo of a lifetime, posing with Tony, Rhodey, and the empty suits.

Gifts were swapped, of course. Tony brought new SI tablets for each and every board member along with a bottle of 27-year old small batch bourbon, Brooklyn chocolates, limited edition Avengers trading cards, and signed posters of ~~War Machine~~ Iron Patriot. He received seven pre-release phone models (none of which he would use, as they were clearly inferior to Starktech) and sixteen bottles of sake of varying caliber as well as two beautiful antique sword hilts, destined for another box in storage and eventual charity auction.

That was alright, though. The whole unloading of gifts deal was a Japanese thing. It had to be done.

Four hours after arriving at the Chiba campus, Fujikawa Corp’s board of directors convened and welcomed Tony. Almost the entire first hour of the meeting was filled with apologies - Tony apologizing for the inconvenience caused by his sudden decision to visit Tokyo, the Board apologizing for not being able to see him sooner. Tony winced his way through the interactions, all the while bowing as deeply as his broken ribs would allow him.

Inquiries after his health were made, but he shrugged off the details with uncharacteristic coyness, promising that _it was nothing_ and _oh, it shouldn’t trouble you._ It would all be laid out later – there would be invitations to dinner, and then a bar after dinner, and then the bar after the after-dinner bar… and once the booze was flowing, all the questions Fujikawa Corp’s yes-men _actually_ wanted to ask Iron Man would start spilling forth.

All in due time, of course.

Tony knew all too well that if Steve Rogers or Nick Fury heard the number of times “I’m sorry” passed his lips that afternoon he would straight-up _never live it down._ The truth of the matter, however, was that one didn’t become a multi-billionaire by ignoring social niceties.

The booze-and-schmooze half of business was Tony’s secondary strength. The first of course being his vision when it came to straight-up product development: Tony was an engineer and inventor at heart, but he loved reminding other people how brilliant his ideas actually were. His weaknesses – organization, time management, advertising, product rollout, not to mention cost efficient mass production – were things he hired other people to take care of.

While Tony’s quick tongue, sense of humor, and absurdly sized fortune meant that he’d always been able to get away with murder in New York city social circles, Japan was an entirely different world… one that required a perfunctory amount of ass-kissing before any real business negotiations could take place. The bowing and scraping and modesty rubbed Tony the wrong way entirely, but it had to happen – Pepper needed for it to happen. It was hard, too, for the SI translators Pep kept on tap to translate his roguish humor, but the young man she’d assigned him this time did, at least, manage to earn a few laughs from the more English-challenged members of the crowd.

When the invariable invitations to a private reception at the Peter Bar rolled in, Tony accepted with the required modesty and grace and showed up precisely on time.

Tony knew the drill – the first day in meetings, absolutely nothing would be achieved. The gridlock would continue in a dead heat; and then the kid gloves would hit the floor and negotiations would begin in earnest. 

Being Japan, though, half of those negotiations would occur between the lines of conversation at the after-dinner bar, snatches of reassurance, question, and anticipatory explanation. Not to mention a thick, thick layer of alcohol.

He could do this. For Pepper.

 

 

...........................

 

 

The bar was gorgeous, twenty four stories up and filled with abstract backlit metal trees that, as the sun set over the city, blended with the twinkling skyline beyond the glass panes. 

As they entered the room Tony felt his breath stop. 

Standing next to Kenjiro Fujikawa – a man Tony couldn’t help but mentally categorize as the Howard Stark of Fujikawa corp – was one of the most beautiful women Tony had ever seen. Slim figure, cascades of black hair, dark fan of lashes against pale cheeks… her neck and wrists were long and elegant, accentuated by the fall of a her dusty brown, gingko-patterned kimono. He couldn’t help but stare – and knew that beside him, despite his best intentions, Rhodey was doing the same.

“Welcome, Mr. Stark,” Kenjiro intoned before bowing deeply. His English was good, but not great – the words were slightly stilted, as though they’d been rehearsed beforehand. “Thank you for dining with us this evening. Your presence is a great honor.”

“I could hardly turn down an invitation of this caliber, Fujikawa-san,” Tony said, smiling his best Time Magazine smile. 

The woman at Kenjiro’s side tipped her head in and murmured in his ear. Kenjiro nodded, seeming satisfied, then gestured to her fondly.

“This is my daughter, Fujikawa Rumiko. Rumiko, Mister Stark and Mister Rhodes.”

Tony let his eyes meet Rumiko’s and felt the world shrink down to the perfect curve of her mouth and the space between them. _God,_ she was totally his type.

“Fujikawa-san,” he said as politely as he could, taking her hand and pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “It is an absolute pleasure. This is my friend and colleague, James Rhodes.”

“Charmed, I’m sure,” the young woman responded, lips quirked into a fascinating half-smile. She allowed Tony his kiss, then turned and bowed formally to Rhodey, who took her hand and did the same. “My father has invited me to translate for the two of you this evening. I know that Stark Industries has translators of a high caliber, but he wished to insure that a lack of communication wouldn’t impinge your enjoyment of the evening.”

“That’s very good of him,” said Tony, flashing Rhodey a holy shit we just hit the jackpot grin. The other man’s expression was enthused, though edged with envy – and that dampened Tony’s spirits. Rumiko might be beautiful, but she was no Steve.

Kenjiro said something in Japanese to his daughter, and Rumiko half-bowed in evident obedience. “Gentlemen, may I escort you to your seats?”

“Of course,” Rhodey agreed, taking her arm before Tony could offer his own. Tony allowed him the victory, though his pride insisted that he step in and pull out her chair. Rumiko was good enough to sit between the pair of them – thank god the Fujikawas had the presence of mind to seat them at a Western-style dinner table. Tony wasn’t sure he could have managed to sit on tatami with his ribs in their present condition.

As the guests of honor, Tony and Rhodey were served first as course after course of tiny, appetizer-style plates flooded across the table. Some were things Tony recognized, others were new altogether – some squishy, some crunchy, but Tony had never been a man to shy away from new things, so he gave most of them a good old college try. Rhodey was a little more particular, sticking to foods that were readily identified, though he did allow Rumiko to coerce him into a few more adventurous bites – only one of which was a total strike-out, much to the entertainment of the table at large.

Tony had his drink topped up half a dozen times by curious conversation-goers, chiefly men, who appeared at his elbow with a bottle of Sapporo and used the pour as an excuse to start chatting. Halfway through the two-hour block he switched to tea and let Rhodey soak up the booze, knowing that between the painkillers and his jetlag it wouldn’t take much to tip him over the edge from entertaining into exhausted. 

Between Rumiko and the SI interpreter, conversation got along passably well. It was still droll – lots of repetition, lots of inane questions and the occasional drunken blunder – but for the most part Tony could classify the evening as ‘tolerable’…. Though that might just be due to the gorgeous woman at his side.

The night reeled on; before long the edges were curved and blurring, Tony found himself laughing into his beer (beer? What happened to his tea?) and leaning into Rumiko’s warmth. When he got up to pee he found his way to from the bathroom to the balcony and let himself out.

Twenty-four stories up the sky was soft and pink, wrapped around their tower like a quilt. Tokyo, like New York, was almost unbearable when August heat settled in in earnest, but in late September it was downright pleasant. 

The chill bite of the wind was sobering; that was probably a good thing.

Gripping his glass, Tony moved to the corner closest to the two-dozen story drop and slipped his phone from his pocket. Three more missed messages from Steve.

He briefly considered calling him back, then gave passing through to throwing his phone off the balcony altogether.

“Mister Stark, your expression is too serious for a party,” said a soft voice behind him.

“Rumiko,” Tony turned, feeling her eyes on him before he saw her face. “I’m sorry, I needed a break from the noise.”

“I understand completely. Should I go?”

 _Yes_ , Tony thought. “Don’t,” his mouth said, instead. “How could I ever refuse your company? You’ve been lovely tonight.”

“Mister Stark, you flatter.”

“I mean it,” Tony insisted. Rumiko received top marks in every category when it came to social graces. Not only was she gorgeous and absolutely fluent in English, her translation included the name and rank of each stranger that had approached their table. They all knew her, having watched her grow up in her father’s shadow – but that simple gesture saved Tony the embarrassment of stumbling over unfamiliar names and faces of men he’d met only once or twice before. “Your dad trained you up for this, I’ve no doubt.”

That brought a tinge of distaste over her features. “Excuse me?”

“Kenjiro Fujikawa knows you’re a catch – he trained you for this sort of function, I’m sure. My dad did the same, sent me through language and etiquette courses until I was blue in the face; I soaked it all up, though I deliberately failed out of half of them. Don’t tell me I’m wrong – you might be young, but we’re cut from the same mold.”

“You act as though it’s troublesome to represent my family,” Rumiko observed, wryly. “That’s not a very loyal sentiment, Mister-"

“Please, call me Tony.”

“Tony.”

“I didn’t mean it as an insult. When did your language instruction begin? Your English is perfect.”

“My nanny was English,” the woman said with a faint shrug. “I attended school at Cambridge.”

“I thought I heard a hint of the old country in there,” Tony murmured, tapping her temple. “You’ve a lovely command of language. I didn’t mean to insult; I just know what it’s like to be dropped into a party and made to perform on command.”

Rumiko tipped her head into his finger, and before Tony knew what he was doing, her face was soft and warm against his palm. “Was tonight a performance, then?” she asked.

“No,” Tony admitted. “I’ve enjoyed myself.”

“Miss Potts sent you here after her disagreement with my father.”

“Pepper doesn’t send me places,” Tony sniffed. He was entering dangerous turf, here, and he knew it. Rumiko was a sly woman, one who used the subservient demeanor of a shy Japanese woman to her advantage, but she was her father’s daughter. Her projected image and her goals might align, or they might be utterly different – and woe unto the man who didn’t figure that out before opening his big mouth.

Tony knew better than to say anything lightly, but if Rumiko knew why her father had dug his heels in over the SI contract…

“Speaking frankly, I don’t understand your old man’s trepidations. SI is solid as a rock; his consideration is the only stepping stone between us and a mass-market release to the Japanese public.”

Rumiko’s eyes were dark and serious, her hand resting on the rim of Tony’s glass. “Have you considered the effect your monopolization of the handheld market might have on your competitors?”

“I never let the opinions of others impact my sales trajectory, Ru. SI pushes the envelope. It’s just what we do.”

“Mmm,” the young woman said delicately, sliding her hand up his arm, “if you were be fearful of an exclusive Stark-Fujikawa contract, what would you do?”

The world was doing that awkward shrinking thing again – just him, Ru, the cool beer in his hand and the heat of her fingers.

“That would never happen. I’m always two steps ahead.”

“Humor me. Say the manipulation of the market is your only chance.”

Tony shrugged. “Well then, I suppose it’d be the three Ds - Delay, derail, discredit,” Tony muttered. “Throw a wrench in the….”

Oh. 

_Oh._ So that’s what she meant.

“My, that sounds like an effective tactic,” Ru murmured, moving in. Her mouth came to his in a smooth, soft motion. Tony leaned into the kiss, his free hand circling the small of her delicate back, toying at her mouth with his lips before parting hers to taste everything she was offering –

Shit, no, no no. _Steve._

In a moment he was pulling away, regret panging sharp in his battered ribcage as the hot body against him slid away and Rumiko studied him, licking her deliciously parted lips. 

“I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”

“Can’t?” Ru asked, one brow arching. “Or won’t?”

“I’m…involved with someone.”

“Are you, now,” she said, eyes thoughtful. “I hadn’t heard – and don’t think I didn’t read up on you, Tony.”

“I play close to the chest when it suits me, darling. It’s necessary, on occasion.” His free hand felt awkward – his body wanted to move into her again, all of its own accord.

“Is it,” she repeated – and he could almost see the gears turning in her brain. “She’s a lucky woman, then. But she’s not here.” 

That last bit was said tentatively, fishing for a confirmation or denial. Tony did neither and merely shrugged.

“I’m many things, my dear, but there’s no sense in double-dealing when you’ve got a winning hand.”

“So moral, Mister Stark?” she smirked faintly. “I didn’t expect that. Is there nothing I can do to convince you? I was rather looking forward to this evening; you’re disappointing a hopeful young woman, you know.”

“My deepest condolences,” Tony chuckled, flexing his fingers. “I can’t be tempted.”

“Any human being can be tempted,” Rumiko observed. “He merely requires the right…” And suddenly her hand, so innocent moments before, was sliding down the planes of Tony’s abs, beneath his jacket, and resting on the edge of his black leather belt. “….impetus.”

Tony felt himself respond, felt himself slipping, then dropped a hand over hers and gave it a gentle squeeze, pulling it back up into safer territory. “Not tonight,” he said, softly, knowing his smile was wistful, hating that he’d entertained the notion at all.

“It was worth a try,” Rumiko laughed sweetly and pulled away. 

 

...........................

 

Nine AM.

_ugh._

Tony pressed a hand to his forehead with a theatrical groan. His entire brain was throbbing, pulsing against the confines of his skull. He took a few minutes to concentrate on things like “remembering to breath” and “not heaving his guts up all over the carpet” before he waved a feeble hand at Jarvis’ lens, embedded in the ceiling.

“J, where are my painkillers?!”

“Good morning, sir. Do you mean the medications you have been prescribed, which are not meant to be mixed with alcoholic beverages?”

“JARVIS…”

“Or the illegal-in-your-current-locale ‘alternative healing’ supplements?”

“God, ugh, shut up. Why did I ever give you a sarcasm chip? Shit. Talk about an exercise in self-flagellation.”

“Said painkillers are at your elbow, sir.” Jarvis continued sweetly, as if Tony’s grunts of dismay hadn’t even registered. Goddamn, that AI had a sadistic streak. 

Tony groped for the pills and found a water bottle there as well. Ten minute after swallowing (mmm, industrial grade painkillers) he felt human enough to finish off the water and drag his ass into the shower.

Showering was not actually something he was supposed to be doing, given his various stitches and scrapes. But you know what? Fuck it. He’d leave the gauze pads on and hope for the best. There was no Steve in Japan to provide sexy sponge baths, so it wasn’t like Tony had many other options.

Not trusting himself to stand, Tony slid onto a bench in the (oversized, ridiculous, sexy) shower and tapped the corner of the clear glass shower-wall-slash-touchscreen he’d insisted Pepper install. JARVIS obediently brought up his morning feeds, all imported from New York, but Tony’s eyes automatically flicked over to his unread messages.

Three unread….

“Check messages,” he ordered, squirting shampoo into one hand and trying not to feel pathetic.

_ROGERS, Steve (JST 02:47): Do you have a ride home? I can find you a ride home._  
 _ROGERS, Steve (JST 02:49): Tony?  
ROGERS, Steve (JST 03:05): you are so infuriating, sometimes. be safe._

“Oh god,” groaned Tony. Messages of that nature could only mean one thing….

He’d drunk-texted Steve.

 _He’d drunk-texted Steve._ What the actual fuck, what was he, seventeen?? Tony slapped a shampoo-covered palm to his forehead, then frantically attempted to squish the soap up into his hair rather than let it drop down into his eyes. He left it there and frantically tapped into the backlog of messages and scrolled to the earliest record from that night.

_STARK, Tony (JST 11:35): heeeeyyyyyyyyy steve_

_ROGERS, Steve (JST 11:37): Hi, Tony. Finally answering my messages?_

_STARK, Tony (JST 11:38): I guess_  
 _STARK, Tony (JST 11:38): not really  
STARK, Tony (JST 11:39): I didn’t know what to say so I just didn’t text you back. _

_ROGERS, Steve (JST 11:42): It’s late there. Are you drinking?_

_STARK, Tony (JST 11:42): of course_  
 _STARK, Tony (JST 11:42): this is japan  
STARK, Tony (JST 11:42): I pretty much have to, I think they’d deport me if I didn’t let them top up my Ebisu._

_ROGERS, Steve (JST 11:42): And your meds?_

_STARK, Tony (JST 11:42): clint is right, you are such a mother hen_

_ROGERS, Steve (JST 11:45): We both know you have a history with meds_

_STARK, Tony (JST 11:45): I self-medicated_

_ROGERS, Steve (JST 11:48): Isn’t that illegal in Japan?_

_STARK, Tony (JST 11:50): eh, probably_  
 _STARK, Tony (JST 11:50): I didn’t bother checking  
STARK, Tony (JST 11:51): perks to owning your own jet/robot armor, Steve… nobody puts the Iron Man suit through customs._

_ROGERS, Steve (JST 11:55): Wow_

_STARK, Tony (JST 11:55): being rich is awesome._

_ROGERS, Steve (JST 11:57): So did you need something, or…?_

_STARK, Tony (JST 11:58: you_  
 _STARK, Tony (JST 11:58): I miss you_  
 _STARK, Tony (JST 11:59): japan makes me tired and there’s no you here  
_ _STARK, Tony (JST 12:00): you should have come with me_

_ROGERS, Steve (JST 12:04): If I remember correctly, I wasn’t invited. In fact, I didn’t actually realize you’d left the country until Clint started brainstorming Japanese candies he wanted you to bring home.  
ROGERS, Steve (JST 12:05): (Some kind of chocolate koala bears, btw)_

_STARK, Tony (JST 12:06): oh yeah_  
 _STARK, Tony (JST 12:07): those are delicious  
STARK, Tony (JST 12:07): I forgot I was mad at you._

_ROGERS, Steve (JST 12:09): are you still?_

_STARK, Tony (JST 12:09): ??_

_ROGERS, Steve (JST 12:09): mad?_

_STARK, Tony (JST 12:10): no_  
 _STARK, Tony (JST 12:11): I mostly just miss you_  
 _STARK, Tony (JST 12:11): there is an incredibly gorgeous woman here. She’s the daughter of the CEO and normally I’d be on her like white on rice_  
 _STARK, Tony (JST 12:11): (haha, omg, best analogy ever)_  
 _STARK, Tony (JST 12:12): (sorry, I guess sake makes me like super racist or something, that was awful)_

_ROGERS, Steve (JST 12:12): Tony…_

_STARK, Tony (JST 12:13): I can totally hear disapproval in your texts. How do you even do that  
STARK, Tony (JST 12:14): anyway I was going to say I was happy that we talked because otherwise I would feel obligated to sleep with her and its awesome that I can sit on the balcony and text with you instead_

_ROGERS, Steve (JST 12:14): good, I am glad you’re happy._

_STARK, Tony (JST 12:14): what are you doing?_

_ROGERS, Steve (JST 12:15): I’m at the gym._

_STARK, Tony (JST 12:15): mmmm, excellent visual. Feel like texting me some pecs, big boy?_

_ROGERS, Steve (JST 12:16): Hah_

_STARK, Tony (JST 12:16): you laugh like I’m kidding!_

_ROGERS, Steve (JST 12:18): go back to your party, Tony. They’ll miss you._

_STARK, Tony (JST 12:20): no pecs?????? :(_

_ROGERS, Steve (JST 12:21): only if you’re good._

_STARK, Tony (JST 12:21): I’m always good._

_STARK, Tony (JST 12:25): see how good I'm being?! STEVE_

_STARK, Tony (JST 12:28): steeeeeeeeeevvvvvveeeeeeeeeeeee_

There was nothing more, then – a text an hour or so later from Tony, nothing but gibberish… he must have sat on his phone, or been too drunk for legibility. Then those last messages from Steve:

_ROGERS, Steve (JST 02:47): Do you have a ride home? I can find you a ride home._  
 _ROGERS, Steve (JST 02:49): Tony?  
ROGERS, Steve (JST 03:05): you are so infuriating, sometimes. be safe._

Tony groaned, smooshed his face into his hand, and then set about rinsing the soap from his body. The pain pills wiped his lingering aches away along with the worst of the hangover, but his torso was stiff enough that he knew he’d be feeling it later on. He toweled off as best he could and stepped into a button-down shirt without even bothering to close it … given that he couldn’t raise his arms over his head, his hair dripped water uncomfortably down the back of his neck. He’d have to swap it out if he ended up leaving the house, but who cared, really? 

A pair of comfy slacks followed the shirt, and Tony found himself wondering if he had time to smoke a bowl before whatever Pepper had slotted into his agenda today. 

He padded out into the kitchen and nearly choked on his surprise.

Fujikawa Rumiko stood in the kitchen, utterly naked save a fluffy red monogrammed bath towel, sinfully short and tucked neatly around her chest. She looked up at Tony and smirked at his discomfiture, the cupid’s bow of her lips soft and full.

The skyline of Tokyo stretched out behind her, blue and gray and endless - 

\- and then the windows exploded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. OOPS. sorry I disappeared; I'm working in Europe for the summer and the transition left me swamped.
> 
> 2\. I was also distracted by three days of Chris Evans stalking while Winter Soldier was filming in DC. ["Freezerburn" my ass!](http://www.onlocationvacations.com/2013/05/14/captain-america-the-winter-soldier-filming-locations-in-washington-d-c-today/)
> 
> 3\. I haven't actually read much of Rumiko in the comics, but I know there were rumors about her being in MCU so I went with it. Don't expect any kind of canon compliance when it comes to her.
> 
> 4\. future updates should be more timely, but summer is a busy season for me. I'll certainly try!


	6. Tokyo Rumble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter took a while, thank you for your patience!
> 
> I am aiming for 10 chapters in this work. it is not abandoned, but summer _is_ my busy season.
> 
> <3

As the glass windows exploded inward three things happened at once. 

One, Rumiko began to scream. She pitched forward in a wave of black hair and white skin, dropping down behind the island as red shrapnel cuts blossomed across her shoulders. Tony got a good glimpse of the terror in her eyes as she pitched to the hardwood floor and it set his adrenaline pulsing… god, because the wash of chemicals instantly dulled the throbbing pain in his head and body. He’d be hungover later – it was _hero_ time.

The only thing a good shot of adrenaline couldn’t cure was the leaden guilt settled heavy in his gut, or the tiny shrieking voice of conscience in the back of his head currently screaming _cheater cheater cheater cheater_.

He’d slept with Rumiko. Why the hell had he slept with Rumiko?!

_God, I’ve ruined it, I’ve ruined everything, Steve finally agrees to exclusivity and I fucking pounce on the first pair of fine legs that wanders by, I can’t tell him, I have to tell him godhowdoItellhim -_

Two, even with his mind a thousand miles away, Tony instinctively threw his arms out to his sides and JARVIS – true friend that he was – sent the Mk 44 hurtling towards him. The miniature repulsors scanned his body and snapped into place, clicking and whirring and sealing the cracks into a second skin. The force of their impact had once been jarring but by now Tony felt the weight of them like the hand of an old friend... in some ways it felt more like his proper form than his flesh and bone body ever would. It was comforting, and not just because the hissing hydraulics meant safety and firepower rolled into one – sliding into the armor meant putting on his battle face and setting other things aside. 

Including the trainwreck that was his dating life.

Maybe.

Once the armor was in place the suit’s bioscanners immediately began an automatic run-down on Tony’s vitals. Several of the scrolling data feeds flashed yellow or red in spots, and his ear JARVIS announced that his level of dehydration was unacceptable for the safe operation of the suit. With that, there was a prick in the crook of his elbow and Tony grinned, anticipating relief. The emergency medical protocols guaranteed a saline drip that would shatter his hangover in no time. Strictly speaking it was meant to be kept for lifesaving emergencies, but this headache sure _felt_ like a fucking emergency.

Good ole JARVIS.

Three – and again, JARVIS got more credit for this than Tony himself – even as Tony shouted for backup War Machine broke out of bodyguard mode and blasted (in twenty three glittering pieces) around the corner and through the door into Rhodey’s room. It wouldn’t be his most pleasant wake-up call to date, but it _did_ mean that backup was only moments away.

The HUD flashed a warning as another window imploded. Tony vaulted over both Rumiko and the rapidly disintegrating countertop, landing with an authoritative thwump in the living room. When a third grenade rolled across his ruined tatami floors Tony dove for it, scooping it up and instinctively moving towards the window, looking for someplace to put it that wouldn’t endanger pedestrians or other residents. 

Then he glanced at what he was holding and swore.

“God _damn_ it, I am sick to death of this shit. Attacking my house with my own freaking grenades?! What, universe, the fucking shrapnel in the heart wasn’t quite enough cosmic irony for you?”

The grenade was Starktech, containing a neatly controlled electromagnetic pulse that would blow out any unshielded tech in the area… probably meant to take care of the suit’s electrical systems and leave Tony Stark defenseless while these goons swarmed the buildings. Morons – did they really think Tony wouldn’t safeguard the suit against anything he could think of – and by definition a pulse grenades was on the list, considering he’d _invented the damn thing_?

That’s when the grenade exploded.

Strictly speaking, pulse grenades didn’t explode – unless you were some cheeky fucker who, just to mess with Tony Stark, had swapped actual grenades into his own pulse grenade casings in order to catch him off guard. 

_Fucking hell._

The armor slammed into and through the wall dividing the living room with Rhodey’s guest suite and landed hard, crunching the bedframe into splinters. The impact was painful enough that Tony blacked out for a few moments – not more than a handful of seconds, but god, it _hurt._

“Are you still with me, sir?” asked JARVIS, alarmed. “Your vitals – “

“Are fine enough,” Tony wheezed. “Wanna slap some morphine into that drip?”

“Not advisable given your current medications, I’m afraid,” JARVIS muttered, drolly.

As Tony groaned and choked breath down into his battered chest he caught sight of Iron Patriot. Rhodey was staggering upright, surrounded by a scattering of discarded clothing and bedding. His expression (before the faceplate slammed shut over his features) was distinctly green around the gills. Even better - a pair of red panties was hanging over one arm joint, caught in the seam between gauntlet and elbow.

“Screencap that for grins, JARVIS,” Tony ordered blurrily before firing the gauntlet repulsors and righting himself awkwardly in the ruins of Rhodey’s bed.

Then he whirled and shoved a finger at his friend. “PANTIES?”

“What the actual fuck is going on here?!” Rhodey demanded, turning his repulsors to bear on Tony uncertainly.

“Panties! Those are panties you’re wearing!”

“This had better not be a fucking joke,” Rhodey groused, and Tony could imagine with perfect clarity the long-suffering look under the faceplate. He did, however, take the red undies in one hand and tear them out of the arm’s seam, looking at them blankly before letting them flutter away.

“Not a – “ There was another explosion from the living room, making both of them lurch into motion automatically. “ – joke.”

Tony and Rhodey both dashed out to find the better part of the kitchen counters gone. Rumiko was crawling for the door, bloodied and naked, bit Tony reached her side in two quick strides. He didn’t dare touch her tattered back but he did offer her a metal-clad hand. She took it with trembling hands. 

“Don’t,” he ordered, hunkering down and clicking open the face place. “They expect to flush us out, someone will be waiting in the hall.”

Her eyes were very wide, her breath shaky with terror... but she was still with him, still calculating the odds. Hell of a woman – god, she was a hell of a woman! “What are you going to do?” Ru asked, voice thin and strained.

“I’ll evacuate you as soon as I’ve knocked out whoever's currently planting bullets in my marble countertops. For now, here – “ he meant to swing open the door to the coat closet, but between the adrenaline and the suit’s hydraulics he ended up ripping the door off one of its hinges. “Get in, stay down, and _wait_!!”

Rumiko ducked inside gratefully and pressed her face into the soft fabric of one of Pepper’s long coats, shoulders shuddering with great, deliberate breaths. The sight of her lacerated skin was all that kept Tony’s imminent slew of R. Kelly jokes to himself. 

He shut the faceplate again and opened a private line to Rhodey. “You! _You_ slept with Rumiko! You dog!”

“Tony, what the hell do you - _grenade!_ ”

This grenade looked genuine enough to send Tony’s guts twisting – but when the end popped open all that erupted from the tiny canister was thick black smoke.

“Cracked Starktech,” he told Rhodey, whose body language (even in the suit) was confused. “Form and function disparate, handle with care. Seriously, it was you. I can’t even – thank god, just, I - ”

Rhodey ignored Tony for the moment and instead blasted through the empty window, flipping head over heels before hurtling down into the parking lot. As he vanished from sight JARVIS tapped the exterior security cameras and popped up a small feed in the corner of Tony’s vision, just to keep an eye on things. 

Tony himself slammed through the outer door and fell into a crouch in the hall. Through the security cameras, he watched Rhodey set his sights on an army-drab van and go to work. Iron Patriot’s knees landed on the hood with a heavy crunch, the weight of the armor punching a crater into the metal and neatly cracking the engine block.

“Do I even want to know why you’re keeping tabs on my sex life?” Rhodey trained his palm at the driver’s seat, punched through the safety glass with just enough force to create a hole, allowing him to wrap his hand around the driver’s shoulder and taze the bejesus out of him. The driver slumped over and Rhodey whirled, neatly clipping two more black-masked men as they leapt from behind other parked cars. Nonlethal repulsors, too – good old Rhodey, always careful to avoid an international incident... even when hungover and grumpy.

“Because I love you. Have I told you lately that I love you? You and those fabulous, fabulous panties!”

“You’re just pissed that _I_ pulled the hottest woman at the party for once. I saved the motherfucking _president_ , Tony. That’s some _street cred_ right there.”

Even as he kept an eye on Rhodey, Tony swept the hallway with his hands posed at the ready, repulsors glittering with suppressed power. “God, you don’t even… I thought – I woke up and she was in the kitchen, I thought I’d ruined everything fucking around with Ru, Steve would have killed me, it was the worst five minutes of my life, til I saw those beautiful, beautiful panties and realized - “

“Wait. Wait – Tony - _STEVE?_ ”

Oops.

Tony’s sensors detected nothing on the landing, but there _were_ strange electronic signatures coming from the elevator shaft. There were really only two types of illicit device you’d find slapped on the bottom of an elevator – explosives or surveillance equipment – and Tony could guess which one he’d get to play with today. 

“Sensors suggest what is likely an incendiary device has been placed on the bottom of the elevator, sir.” JARVIS pointed out, stating the _absolute_ obvious even as Rhodey groaned in his ear.

“Please tell me you don’t mean Steve Rogers – Christ. You do mean Steve Rogers. You so – what the actual fuck? You’re banging _Captain America?!_ Is that even legal?”

Tony ripped the doors open and found the elevator ground to a half partway between his floor and the next. There was a two-foot gap between the bottom of the car and the hundred-foot drop beneath, so Tony sank his hands into the edge of the elevator car. He fell backwards, using the repulsors to lower himself slowly to his back and then hauled himself forward into the dark, open shaft feet-first.

“Do you think I care? Anyway, fine then I won’t tell you – I wasn’t _going_ to tell you. Besides, we might kind be broken up, I don’t know, it was all up in the air when I left...“

There was a series of explosions so loud they sent dust cascading down from the space above. Tony increased the light output of the repulsors and filled the hollow guts of the building with bright blue-tinged light. He didn’t have to look far to find the source of the signatures. What looked like two black duffel bags were indiscriminately taped against the bottom of the elevator itself… it was no small miracle Tony hadn’t kicked into them when he moved into the shaft.

 _’Amateurs’_ , thought Tony, as he flexed his fingers.

In his ear, Rhodey was speaking through gritted teeth. Tony kept the audio on but cut his visual feed – even Tony Stark wasn’t a talented enough multitasker to juggle bomb diffusions, discussions of his terminally ill love life, and a front-row seat to Rhodey’s grade-A brand of badassery. 

“Wait, you mean _you had my fly all the way from Guam because you had a fight with your secret boyfriend_?!”

“Analysis, JARVIS,” Tony ran scanners on the bags, wondering if it would be easier to diffuse them here or slide them out of the elevator shaft and drop them out in the harbor. “Don’t make it sound so juvenile – besides, he’s not my boyfriend! He’s my … I don’t fucking know. You needed a vacation anyway, I just gave you an excuse.”

“Pepper told me you were having issues, but good lord. Your love life is like the worst kind of teen sitcom.” Another explosion and a round of gunfire curtailed by a clang so loud Tony could hear it over the com. “Seriously, you should sell that shit to MTV.”

“I suggested that a few years ago,” Tony admitted, running a second set of scans on the bombs. Rhodey’s running commentary in his ear was strangely relaxing – easy to respond to or ignore as needed, something to fill the silence other than the pounding of his heart in the suit’s metal confines. “The Board shot me down.”

“We’re good here,” Rhodey announced from outside. Tony could imagine him dusting his gauntlets of debris and striking an “accidental” pose or two for any lucky onlookers… the ‘candid’ photos of Iron Patriot that turned up in the papers were always too good to be coincidental. Rhodey was far more vain than he let on.

“Sir, the devices are clean but the interiors are most certainly professional. The output signal is likely a decoy meant to complicate their disarmament; it rotates through a number of different frequencies and scrambling my scanners.”

Of course. Bait and switch – amateur duffle bags and duct tape containing advanced explosive devices – but why the elevator? There were some elements of this section of the building that would damage the structural integrity, but not enough to bring the thing down. The fact that the elevator was stuck at his floor suggested that he was the target of the intended bombing, but what hopeful assassin would assume Tony Stark would take the elevator out of a war zone when he kept two perfectly good suits of superpowered armor in his living room?

“They look amateur, but they’re a piece of work…” Tony muttered to himself. “Show me the readouts. Is there a timed mechanism?”

Rhodey’s voice again – impatient, now. “Tony, what’s your status?”

“Houston, we have explosive devices. Repeat, explosive devices,” Tony ground out, narrowing his eyes at the bombs before him and tuning out the short swear Rhodey ground into his ear.

“Elements of the code do appear to be counting down, sir. They suggest you have … just under two minutes before detonation.

“Rhodey, _topside, now_. Blow a hole the top off the elevator shaft and get ready for some heavy lifting.”

“Affirmative,” Rhodey snapped – all official and military now that shit was really on the line.

Tony slid out of the elevator shaft leapt into the car itself. He took six precious seconds to scan the top of the elevator and guarantee there weren’t any other packages topside, then fired a controlled repulsor blast through the roof of the compartment. A spray of hot metal rained down around him and the entire car jerked with a sickening lurch.

Tony grimaced, hooked an arm into the wall and poured all of his power into the armor’s boots. 

Metal shrieked, panels groaned, and then slowly – way, way too slowly – the car started to move.

The high-pressure exertion of moving a thousand pound elevator car with several broken ribs left Tony half-groaning, half-screaming into his helmet; for a moment his vision spotted with red and he worried he’d pass out. “JARVIS, autopilot in the event of loss of consciousness. You understand the situation.”

“I do, sir. Please be careful.”

“I’m always careful,” Tony hissed through gritted teeth. Somehow, JARVIS managed to make even his silence sound skeptical.

Then there was a heavy lurch and the car began accelerate upwards. Tony’s vision tunneled before another overhead explosion flared and died away, letting light wash over the oily walls of the elevator’s interior. In seconds Rhodey was throwing a shoulder into the panel opposite Tony and taking on half the load.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Tony croaked, relief lancing painfully through his arms and shoulders.

“Seriously. Steve Rogers. You’re insane,” Rhodey grumbled. 

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Tony’s attempt at a laugh was too pained to be convincing. That was enough banter, for now – time to put his back into things.

Together they hauled the elevator car through the roof of the building, Rhodey blasting away a corner that was catching on the left side.

The hydraulics in the armor’s wrists and elbows were groaning and giving under the weight. They’d need to drop this somewhere fast before the circuitry overloaded or the titanium-alloy gauntlets started caving in under the pressure… the idea of the joints denting inward, severing tendons and arteries, made Tony’s skin crawl.

Fortunately none of that needed voicing – Rhodey knew his mind and together they angled towards the bay.

If Tony’s breathing spiked abnormally, if flashes of far-away galaxies and gaping spiral portals spun before his eyes, JARVIS was good enough not to say anything at all.

In the end the exploding elevator crashed into the sea and detonated with a depressingly unimpressive watery gurgle. Tony was already speeding away over the bay when Rhodey looked away from the rippling, churning surface below.

He spoke in Tony’s ear, voice tight. “Talk to me, Tony. What’s this all about?”

“I don’t fucking know,” Tony admitted, blasting into the ruins of his living room and stalking over to the closet in the entryway. “But I know who does.”

...........................

Ever since the attack on his home in Malibu Tony had invested in safehouses. Ten years ago such a thing would have seemed absurdly paranoid – he’d probably have been the first in line to roll his eyes and call it “tinhatty” – but nowadays it just seemed like good sense. The “Mandarin” had hit him where it hurt – the house, and Pepper – and left him with nowhere to run to. That wasn’t going to happen again.

Trouble was, his nearest safehouse was in Hawaii. 

Instead, they blasted out of Tokyo proper and out over the mountains, Rumiko wrapped in three of Pepper’s long coats and clinging to Tony for dear life. Holding her was easy – JARVIS knew exactly how much pressure was required to keep her secure while not damaging pale skin and delicate bones. Even better, letting JARVIS handle the trajectory (and reservations at their eventual destination) left Tony free to dedicate his mind to more pressing issues than Rumiko’s comfort. 

He kept the outboard mic cut and spoke for Rhodey’s ears alone. “I don’t think I was the target of this attack.”

“The elevator,” Rhode’s quick uptake sent a swell of appreciation through Tony – if only the rest of the world caught on half as quickly as Rhodey.

“Yeah. Only one person on our floor would have used the elevator, or the stairwell by the elevator, as an escape route.”

“So someone is trying to kill Rumiko? Any ideas on who?”

Ru shifted against him, shivering, and JARVIS dropped their altitude fractionally. They swept closer to the unfurling waves of tree-crusted hills below. “I have a few ideas, but nothing with a lot of traction. Did she say anything to you last night?”

Rhodey coughed.

“Not while you were in bed, dumbass. Please, you think you’re gonna make _me_ blush?” Tony snorted. “We talked for a few minutes on the balcony; she suggested someone was obstructing the Fujikawa/Stark mobile merger. Someone who stood to lose out big time if the Japanese market was slammed with the newest Starkphone.”

“Let me guess,” Rhodey muttered. “No specifics.”

“Nah,” Tony shrugged fractionally before relinquishing manual control again. “But I’m willing to bet she has a pretty good idea.”

Silence stretched between them as they moved over the dark, placid surface of what the HUD designated as Lake Ashi.

“Tony,” Rhodey said at last, the timber of his voice broadcasting his discomfort with what he was about to say, “I, uh. I know you probably had a pretty good reason for not telling me about you and Steve…”

Tony opened his mouth to snap out a dry retort – ‘duh,’ or ‘obviously’, or _something_ …. but they all stuck brittle and dry in his throat.

“But I want to remind you that… we’re bros, you know? I may not be touchy-feely and shit, but I like knowing what’s going on with you. Especially something as big as this.”

“Who say’s it’s big?”

“You do,” Rhodey all but growled. “The way you’ve been acting – it’s weird, man. I can’t guess at your reasons, but… on the off-chance that it was because you’re like, worried that I’ll hate you or something… I, uh, don’t care that you’re with a dude.”

Tony found himself biting the inside of his lip.

“I _do_ care that you’re with Captain America. He’s your coworker – and kind of your commanding officer. That’s a messy position to be in.”

“That’s what she said,” Tony responded under his breath, automatically. Rhodey ignored him.

“Do the other Avengers know?”

Tony tried to crush back the guilty thrum in his chest. “Not exactly. I haven’t told them. Not in… so many words.”

“Then look, Tones. I am sympathetic and kind of weirdly happy for you. Cap is a good looking dude and you’re definitely the only human being I know who has managed to fulfilled his dorky teenage fantasies by boning a 1940’s superhero - but if you’re going to risk your life every day with the other Avengers, you need to tell them. It impairs his judgment. It’ll affect his calls in the field. They need to know this so that they can prepare and act with that information in hand.”

“I think Natasha already knows,” Tony confessed, looking down at the curve of Rumiko’s blue-pale cheeks.

“Even if she’s guessed, do her the courtesy of having an _actual conversation_ about it. I’m not close to your team, but I’d be shocked if any of them cared about the whole gay thing… and just as shocked if they weren’t pissed that you hadn’t clued them in.”

Tony was saved from having to respond by the HUD flashing information on their immediate arrival into a gorgeous resort and spa tucked away against the side of a verdant green hill. 

“We’re here,” he announced instead, absurdly grateful for the change in topic.

“Awesome,” said Rhodey. “Let’s get that woman some actual clothes.”

...........................

Because JARVIS was greater than the sum of his (and Tony’s) parts there were already clothes for Rumiko laid out neatly on the bed of the hotel’s only three bedroom suite. Her skin was porcelain blue, veins standing out in painful clarity – but rather than reach for the clothes she opened the wardrobe, pulled out a soft cotton yukata, and shrugged it over her shoulders, holding it shut rather than belting it.

That done she settled straight away into one of the low beds, shivering. Tony knew she couldn’t be comfortable – and the cuts were already bleeding through the cotton. JARVIS informed them (via the external speakers on Tony’s armor) that a private doctor willing to sign a complete nondisclosure contract would be arriving within fifteen minutes to see to Ms. Fujikawa’s wounds. 

Rhodey made Ru a cup of tea while Tony poured himself a drink from the minibar. She sat herself up in bed, clasping the clay teacup in both hands gratefully, blowing the steam away before taking a sip.

“So Ru,” Tony asked, as kindly as he could considering his 1,150,000,000 yen Roppongi condo had just been forcibly remodeled to resemble a garbage heap, “who exactly is trying to kill you?”

He expected evasion – clever comments, witty evasions… but what he got appeared to be the unvarnished truth.

“HanmaCo,” Ru said, simply.

Tony’s eyes fell shut with a groan. HanmaCo – the Japanese division of Justin Hammer’s embarrassing attempt at an innovative tech company. That dude was the most tenacious, pathetic…

“I’m sorry I couldn't tell you at the party,” Rumiko said softly, looking between both of them. “I knew the rooms would be bugged, and if I was too blunt they’d realize I was cluing you in to what was going on. I thought it would be best to leave with one of you in a private car.”

Rhodey made a little noise of discontentment, and Ru flashed him a small, apologetic smile. “The excellent company was an unexpected bonus,” she said gently, soothing his ego. 

Tony decided immediately to never mention that Rumiko had propositioned _him_ first. Instead of teasing, he went straight for the heart of the matter. “So they forbade you from speaking with me?”

“They forbid my _father_ from speaking to you and placed me under surveillance.” She pressed her lips together and shrugged. “My father is a very religious man, who prays devoutly - a representative of HanmaCo visited my father as he returned from his prayers at Meijijingu and informed him that if we accepted the contract Stark International was negotiating with us, my life would be forfeit.”

“Why the hell did you seek us out?” Tony’s brows shot upwards. “Surely a phone call would suffice.”

“Obviously my lines were bugged,” the woman said, drolly. “Besides, you’re Iron Man and Iron Patriot – I figured your home was the safest place in Tokyo. And if it wasn’t, you’d have no choices but to involve yourself and the problem would be solved one way or another.”

“Very utilitarian of you,” Rhodey observed. The word was sharp, but the expression on his face was dangerously close to admiration. Tony understood the sentiment – Rumiko was doing what needed to be done despite personal risk; that was worthy of admiration any day of the week.

Rumiko twitched her shoulders in a shrug and then winced as the motion pulled at her back. “We need that SI contract,” she said, flatly. “The Japanese market has been inundated with Korean-made mobiles – Samsung – and American brands that won’t partner with local providers – like the iPhone. The Japanese are brilliant and our mobiles unique. Partnering with Stark International would allow us an opportunity to showcase that to the world.”

“You’re not wrong,” Tony admitted. “I’ve seen the prototypes your people sent Pepper to play with. They’re no Stark Tech, but they’ve got a great open platform OS and there are features American mobile providers really need to steal and integrate.”

“Thanks,” Ru muttered, pursing her lips. “I think.”

Rhodey interrupted before Tony could stuff his foot any deeper into his own mouth. “HanmaCo… that’s the Asian branch of Hammer Tech, right? That guy really hates you.”

“Oh, you mean the giant killer robot fight a couple years back didn’t tip you off?” Tony snorted. “This is hardly the first major contract we’ve pulled out from under him, or used to isolate his tech and render it obsolete. _Or_ the first time he’s resorted to illegal means in an attempt to secure his company’s financial future,” Tony pointed out. “That _is_ , you may remember, how he ended up in prison. JARVIS, they haven’t let Hammerpants out of maximum security lately, have they?”

“Mr. Hammer is currently involved in parole hearings in an attempt to reduce his prison sentence, sir.”

“Well,” Tony said thoughtfully. “Maybe we can use these attacks as ammunition and hit him where it hurts.”

There was a knock on the door. “JARVIS, sensors.”

“Vital signs match the doctor with whom we have contracted, sir.”

Tony gestured and Rhodey answer the door. James Rhodes cut an imposing figure – not that Iron Man didn’t, but Iron Patriot had a hell of a lot more visible artillery. Broad, tall, and still wearing all of his armor save the helmet and faceplate; Rhodey was two steps away from looking like the world’s most kickass Space Marine cosplayer. 

Tony could spot the exact moment their visitor realized exactly whom he’d contracted with, and the look on the man’s face made him grin.

“Yoroshiku,” said Rhodey, smirking at the doctor’s discomfiture. “Do come in.”

Tony beat his retreat then, leaving Rhodey to oversee Rumiko’s safety. Major questions had been answered; now recovery time was in order.

Tony was in enough pain that removing the armor required more patience than he was capable of. The joints in his arms were slightly warped by the heavy lifting, not enough to significantly hinder mobility but enough that each joint stuck determinedly when he pressed the release catches. Working the left hand of his armor off piece-by-piece while his blood sugar levels dropped and his ribs throbbed was not a particularly pleasant experience.

His back hurt, his head hurt, his arms hurt – and worse, the villains of the world appeared to be dedicated to completely destroying his standing with his property insurance companies. 

“Fuck it all,” he decided, eventually, and dropped back against the sheets of his own bed. Booze and exhaustion would serve in lieu of painkillers in a pinch.

Tony let his eyes sag shut, face pressed against his pillow, and was asleep within moments.

...........................

When he woke it was to the feeling of strong, familiar hands on the armor. Blearily, he realized that Rhodey must be done with Rumiko and have realized Tony couldn’t get out of the suit on his own. Talk about _embarrassing_.

Tony’s first reaction was to flail – he tried to haul one arm up and slap away the offending visitor, but lifting the weight of a gauntleted arm proved to be beyond him. He felt weak – his head was swimming, his chest pounding terribly. “Fuck, gerroff, let me sleep – “

“You know you’ll hurt if you sleep any longer in this,” said a voice that was a lot of things, but definitely _not_ that of James Rhodes.

Tony’s eyes snapped open in surprise. For a moment he thought he might have dreamed it, but as an awkward silence stretched on he felt the weight of a hand settle against the small of the armor’s back.

Abruptly he found his chest pounding for an entirely different reason and tried to roll over onto his back. “Steve?”

Steve caught the motion and helped him maneuver, supporting his weight and settling him down flat. Tony was acutely aware of how ridiculous he must look, laying in bed with half the armor laying in pieces around him.

Sitting on the bed, one leg crooked up and the other hanging over the side, Steve Rogers looked good enough to eat. His eyes tracked Tony’s, then spread down over the opened right gauntlet and across the scraped, dinged armor. He didn’t look angry, exactly, but… what the hell was he doing here? Was this about the texts? How’d he know where to find them? Tony felt his filters drop and a flood of nervous babble bubble to the surface of his thoughts. “I, uh, I know it’s sort of embarrassing, but everything hurt and the armor catches are dented in so I just –“

Steve leaned in, fitted his mouth to Tony’s, and kissed him silent.

A brief scratch of stubble, the pressure of lips – and Tony opened up automatically. He’d never been able to deny Steve, so he let the other man work himself inside his mouth, nipping and laving and _oh god_ , he’d missed this, he needed this, _why had he ever left_ \- 

The fingers of Tony’s one free hand reached up of their own accord to tangle in soft blonde, pressing Steve inwards, keeping him where he was meant to be. The kiss anchored him to the spot, eliminated the constant stream of doubtful self-loathing in the back of his head, set a warmth of arousal pooling in his gut – a check his body definitely couldn’t cash at the moment. 

When Steve pulled back it was with reluctance. He dipped in to kiss the side of Tony’s mouth, his neck, and his temple. As Tony let his fingers slide free, Steve took those up and kissed them too, the pads of his fingers and then his knuckles, one by one.

Tony melted. “Steve…”

“Let’s get you out of that armor,” Steve suggested. The noise of assent that slid from Tony’s throat was absolutely embarrassing.

Steve worked the catches with confidence, pursing his lips when the joints stuck, using his (incredibly sexy, ugh) superpowered strength to ease the stress on the joints and slide Tony’s long limbs gently free.

“We’re, Steve,” Tony managed, dizzily. His ribs were starting to throb again – Steve must have read the pain in his expression, because his ands went still for a moment, letting Tony catch his breath. “Why are you here? People are gonna pitch a fit when they realize the Avengers are performing unauthorized international operations.”

“The last time someone attacked your home you went incommunicado for three days and spent them tromping around in the freezing Tennessee woods.”

“That was just once!”

“Once is enough! Besides… I’m not here as an Avenger,” Steve left his hand against Tony’s chest, broad and flat. “I’m here as a friend.” Then his cheeks reddened slightly and he looked away, focusing on nothing at all, “as a ….boyfriend, I guess. If you’ll still have me.” 

“If I’ll…” Tony started, disbelief shuddering through him. Like he’d ever kick Steve Rogers out of his bed. Like Steve wasn’t the absolute best thing that had _ever_ happened to him.

Then he caught the expression on Steve’s face and bit back the edge of his laugh. What was it Steve had said back in New York? _’I can’t help hating that I’m even like this.’_

He’d never called Tony his boyfriend before. And yeah, it sounded kind of ridiculous, like a bad 1990s romcom, but Tony had never heard anything sweeter slip from Steve Rogers’ mouth.

Instead of laughing, Tony took his hand and sank their fingers together. “Thank you,” he whispered.

Steve met his eyes, then – soft blue, uncertain, hopeful all at once. He unhinged the chest plate with his left hand (casual ambidexterity, just one more thing Tony loved about the man) and lifted it aside.

One hand remained pressed against Tony’s thrumming heart as he leaned in to kiss him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. [Soundtrack for much of this chapter](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DfOs4YPGdA) \- IDK how well the lyrics work, but hey.


	7. Man with a Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No additional warnings for this chapter - no warnings!! unless, maybe, accidental racism? bad Samurai movie references? nah, let's go with no warnings, I think we're safe.

Tony must have fallen asleep, because one moment Steve was there next to him – a heavy, comfortable presence, like the world’s sexiest security blanket – and the next the bed was empty.

Beside the bed Tony found a few paper packets full of pills. He couldn’t read the Japanese on the labels, so he elected to run them by Rumiko before tossing back the contents, just to be on the safe side. The clock told him it was three pm – he’d slept for a few hours, then. He must have really needed it.

He showered quickly and found clothes set out on the room’s low, light colored desk – they weren’t what he would have chosen himself, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. At any rate, they were better than the grimy poncho he’d stolen from a wooden Indian in Tennessee, so he shrugged them on without making a fuss.

The jeans were new and therefore tight; he found himself checking out his own ass in the mirror, hoping Steve would like the view.

Transformation to love-struck teenage girl: complete.

Steve, as it turned out, was eating lunch with Rumiko and Rhodey in the suite’s dining room. If Ru had realized why he was there she certainly gave no indication – in fact, gauging by the tilt of her body towards Cap it was clear she found him just as tempting a target as Rhodey or Tony himself.

 _Poor girl,_ thought Tony, trying for magnanimous rather than jealous and only partially succeeding. _Barking up the wrong tree again._

“Tones!” Rhodey thumped the table between himself and Steve. “Sit. Eat. Your guard dog has a plan and stuff.”

“That’s why we pay him the big bucks,” Tony smirked and eased into the chair, pushing the paper packets towards Rumiko. “Thoughts on these? As much as I’d like to nuke the whole agonizing-chest-pain thing, I need to keep a relatively clear head if we’re going on an ass-kicking spree.”

“Nuke?” Rhodey asked, raising his eyebrows. “Totally appropriate word choice there. Very sensitive.”

“Look, it’s a term of speech, it’s not – “

Rumiko set her chopsticks on her plate and flipped the packets over, unoffended. “One of these once a day, this one is a powder so I’d recommend chasing it with something sweet, like juice, morning and night – and one of these as needed, no more than six in a day. I’d go easy on them, they might make you loopy.”

“Beautiful,” Tony mumbled, downing one of each. The packet was _horrible_ and left him coughing so hard there were tears in his eyes. Why the fuck would anyone dole out painkillers in a form that required so much effort to swallow?

On the upside, Steve thumped him worriedly on the back –Tony was sure he didn’t imagine they way his palm lingered, heavy and comforting.

When the hard edge of his pain disappeared a few minutes later he decided he preferred function to form. The (deliciously effective) powder could stay. 

“What’s the plan?”

Steve tapped the edge of his plate with his chopsticks. Considering his massive hands and the fact that he’d taken a fair amount of convincing that sushi wasn’t some kind of Japanese poison meant to undermine the health of the American people he was an artful eater, using the utensils as gracefully as Rumiko and far more effortlessly than Tony.

“We need to go minimal with this,” the blond said, thoughtfully. “There’s no way to cover up the explosions at your home, but Miss Fujikawa’s involvement hasn’t hit the media, beyond a few photos of you blasting out of the ruins with her in your arms, and that could have been anyone.”

Tony’s chewing slowed, but the look on Steve’s face wasn’t one of concern or irritation... it was almost pleased, as though he were proud Tony had taken the time to spirit a naked woman out of the line of fire and into the frigid lower atmosphere. Thank god for that – Tony wasn’t sure he could have taken another shouting match over a woman he wasn’t sleeping with.

“The gunmen were fair fighters, but didn’t have a lot of experience with firearms,” Rhodey added, spearing a piece of fruit with the end of one chopstick. “I’m guessing there were peons from one of Tokyo’s organized crime regimes, hired up by HanmaCo for a little criminal mischief. No point tracking them down if we can dry up the contract placed on Ru’s head.”

“Exactly,” Steve agreed. “Which means we just need proof the higher-ups were involved. If we can find hard evidence, it seems likely that anyone involved will publically apologize and step aside… from what reading I’ve done, that seems to be these people’s M.O. Er,” Realizing he was sitting at the table with one of ‘those people’, Steve stuttered to a stop. “I’m sorry, Miss Fujikawa, that was – “

“You’re spot-on. Steve, we’ve been through six prime ministers in six years,” Rumiko rolled her eyes and waved his worries away. She really was a hell of a woman – sort of like a cross between Pepper and Angelina Jolie, Tony decided. “If there’s one thing Japanese white-collar workers know how to do it’s how to take a fall for the good of the company as a whole.”

Tony popped a potsticker in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. He hadn’t thought much about the fact that Steve had never been to Japan before, or that the bulk of his experience with the country would have been negative. Howard Stark had forgiven the Japanese their part in the second World War and even, in some ways, come to admire the nation he’d once designed tech against… Steve hadn’t had decades to get over it. He’d grown up surrounded by the anti-Japanese propaganda that saturated allied radio waves and newspapers… it must be strange for him to be here now, chit-chatting with someone like Ru.

“So how to we find proof?”

“Start at either end,” Tony suggested. “Get down and dirty with the thugs and figure out who their contact is, or go for broke and crack the databases in HanmaCo itself.”

“Sneak into HanmaCo?” Rhodey asked, giving Tony a wry look. “You want a burly black dude and a six foot tall blonde to sneak into a Japanese tech company? Aren’t you supposed to be a genius?”

“I didn’t mean _you_ ,” Tony sniffed. “I meant me and _Ru_.”

Rumiko and Steve burst into simultaneous complaints; Tony let them wash over him for a moment before he lifted both hands and tried to settle the conversation. “Come on, guys. It’s a good plan. It always works in the movies.”

“In the movies?!” Rhodey choked.

“Yeah, you know, Zato-ichi style? In the old movies there’s always a gorgeous young girl who’s like, inherited her father’s dojo and stuff, and she has to defend the family name with the help of a handsome wandering swordsman… which is pretty much what we did this morning, Ru.”

“Oh, of course.” Ru rolled her eyes. “Sleeping my way into your condo and getting it blown up by yakuza thugs, then having giant robot armor spirit me away to the nicest Hyatt in Hakone is definitely the makes of a classic Kurosawa film.”

“Oh snap,” Rhodey nearly choked on his orange juice.

“You enlisted a pair of wandering warriors on your father’s behalf!” Tony protested. “I’m just saying, the trope is there.”

“You weren’t wandering, you were running away from an argument with your –“ Rhodey started, faltered, recovered. “-teammates.”

Steve looked sharply at Rhodey, then over to Tony with a frown. “This doesn’t sound like a very good movie.”

“I didn’t say they were good, I just said – you know what, never mind what I said.” Tony muttered. “Look. I need you, Ru. Rhodey and Steve two won’t pass on an interrogation attempt. I speak a little Japanese and have the tech know-how to get past their security systems, and you speak beautifully – you can cover for me once we’re in. No one will recognize you.”

Rumiko looked lie she’d just swallowed a tablespoon of wasabi. She’d really thought Tony and Rhodey would clean up her mess, huh? Well, if Fujikawa wanted that SI contract they might just have to _work_ for it.

Ru must have reached the same conclusion because she sighed, tension draining out of her shoulders in a distinctly resigned way. “They might not recognize me, but they’ll definitely recognize you, Tony.”

Tony hadn’t thought of that.

She smiled sweetly. “I’ll have the front desk send up an electric razor.”

...........................

In the end breaking into HanmaCo was pathetically easy.

It wasn’t that security was particularly lax or that there weren’t a few close calls – even with his beard gone (long live the Starkbeard) Tony couldn’t pass for Japanese. Instead, when directly questioned he spoke only in Italian, or in broken Japanese the way he imagined his mother would have spoken it. 

They slipped into a lab station (they’d paid the fortunate soul who normally worked there half his yearly salary in cash to take the day off) and were logged into the corporate intranet in minutes. The intranet itself was disappointing, too. It was completely offline, meaning that nobody on the outside had the means to access it remotely, but from the inside it was a matter of simple passcodes and finding a few hidden file trees. 

Laughable. God, Justin Hammer sucked at everything.

Tony’s fingers flew over the keyboard as Rumiko pretended the printer was jammed and made a show of popping out various bits and pieces and popping them in again, distractingly.

It only took about fifteen minutes for Tony to pull up the information they needed and download it to not one but two separate flash drives. He handed one to Rumiko and she dropped it down her shirt, snug inside her bra. Tony slid his into one of his shoes.

Rhodey and Steve were tackling the other end of things, tracking down the remnants of the gang that had attacked the Roppongi condo and generally making a mess. They were the distraction, meant to lead anyone watching the group to believe that the Stark/Fujikawa camp was going after the gang rather than the ringleaders.

Steve was being honest when he said he wasn’t there in the capacity of Captain America. He’d even left the costume (and shield, holy crap) back in the states. Instead he wore something slinky and black with a massive V cut into the chest, baring a distracting amount of pectoral and bulging six pack to the wandering eye.

“Jesus Christ, what is this, your stripper outfit?!” Tony had asked, running his fingertips hungrily up the sides.

“Designed for espionage and infiltration,” Cap said, almost shyly. 

“It’s ridiculous. And hot. Ridiculously hot. I like your hair,” Tony could only perform so well when blood was rushing away from the upstairs brain and into the downstairs one. 

Steve slid the mask over the bridge of his nose and quirked a half-smile, tousled blond locks spilling over the edge of the mask. “Coulson designed it. Nat found the prototype after… New York, and thought it’d be nice if I put it to good use. There’s a cape, too.”

Well, that was a real boner-killer. Tony dropped his hands from Steve’s washboard stomach and shook his head. “Of course there is – Coulson was a true classicist when it came to costumes.”

The Iron Man armor was currently being piloted by Rhodey himself, who shared Steve’s reservations about plunging into a conflict abroad while branded with the United States flag. It hurt to watch someone else pilot the armor, but he’d instructed JARVIS to fall into data collection mode, hoping that the nuance of someone else’s piloting skills might reveal places where the hardware needed work.

“That was too easy,” Tony muttered, slipping out the side door of HanmaCo with a flash drive tucked away inside his shoes. Rumiko wore a long white coat and had tucked her long hair up to give the appearance of a sharp bob cut.

“You trying to jinx us?” She asked, raising a brow. They walked out into the parking lot, looking like two ordinary laboratory scientists leaving work for the day. They followed a slow stream of departing staffers towards the nearest subway entrance, keeping their heads down and their conversation soft.

“I’m feeling pretty good so far,” Tony shrugged, feeling cavalier. To be honest, his heart wasn’t even pounding. After fending off a gargantuan alien invasion over the economic heart of the developed world breaking into a Japanese lab was absolute child’s play… even a lab that belonged to Justin Hammer.

(Hammer was, after all, about as good at crime as he was at hardware development. That was to say - _terrible._ ) 

They road the subway two stops, then got off and on another train, rode that one four stops, stepped off and flagged down a cab. By the time they were back in Shinjuku, where JARVIS had made another set of reservations under a false name, Tony was certain no one was following them. 

He stepped into the nearest kōban – one of the little police boxes that dotted Japanese neighborhoods - still wearing his fake HanmaCo lab coat but with a baseball cap pulled low over his face. Rumiko dropped the flash drive on the counter. “This contains information about the bombings at Roppongi Hills,” she said – or he supposed she said, given his rudimentary grasp of Japanese. He definitely heard the word Roppongi, anyway, and from the way the guy behind the counter leapt up in surprise, whatever she said must have shocked him.

Rumiko took his arm and they turned to leave. When the fellow tried to stop them, she touched his cheek (ha!) and smiled. “I’m Fujikawa Rumiko,” she said simply, “and this is Tony Stark.”

“We can be reached for statements at the Keio Plaza Hotel,” Tony added, waving at the three additional police officers that stepped out from behind the counter. Ru translated and allowed him to escort her out.

Inside the suite they flipped on the television and watched news coverage of Iron Man going to town – Rhodey making a big deal of roping the baddies to lampposts and allowing the local police force to make the actual arrests. Tony caught flashes of Steve, but only because he was looking for it – Rhodey was showboating to distract from the appearance of a new caped figure.

Steve now had an alter-alter-ego. This could get confusing.

The police did come for statements, and at length the news coverage swapped from the fighting on the docks to the police raid on HanmaCo and the arrest of the President, Vice-President, and regional manager of the greater Japan area. 

Fujikawa-san came to collect his daughter. His face was red with an emotion somewhere between terror and sheer gratitude. He actually gave Tony a _hug_ , clasped Rhodey’s hands firmly in his own, and bowed so deeply he was parallel to the floor.

Ru blew them kisses as the elevator doors slid shut.

“What a woman,” Rhodey sighed, shaking his head.

“Worth leaving Guam for?” Tony asked, all false innocence and fluttering lashes.

“Hell fucking yes,” Rhodey grinned. They went in for a fistbump, then out for a beer.

...........................

That was it. That was the end of their Japanese adventure.

Rhodey flew the Iron Patriot armor back to Guam, while Tony and Steve took the Quinjet back to New York. In the cool silence over the Pacific Tony mourned the loss of his facial hair (“you look more like Howard this way,” Steve had blurted out in shock, UGH ugh ugh ew ugh) and sorted out exactly what Captain America had been doing with his time since Tony had left New York. 

Tony had assumed that Steve had taken out the spare Quinjet when he got word of the bombings in Roppongi – but it turned out that Steve had flown cattle car all the way from New York after Tony’s drunken texting fit, having decided that their argument was stupid and that he’d bodily haul Tony back to New York City rather than continue their tepid textual sparring. The news of the Roppongi bombings hit the Internet as they were homing in on Tokyo Narita airport, and Steve had spent two nail-biting hours refreshing the news feeds for updates.

Fortunately, Steve Rogers was now techno-savvy enough to communicate via e-mail with JARVIS. The AI evidently found Steve’s dedication to sorting out whatever was going on between him and Tony to be a satisfactory cause - he forwarded the coordinates of the Hakone hotel to Steve as soon as they’d been available; he’d even chartered the poor guy a helicopter to get him there post-haste.

JARVIS was also good enough to hold the plane on course while Tony initiated Steve into the Mile High Club. 

A true friend, JARVIS.

...........................

Tony thought… well, he’d thought quite a few things when Steve turned up on the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean. He’d thought they’d finally worked through the whole Dear God Please Don’t Let Me Like Dudes thing, and the Too Embarrassed To Show A Modicum of Physical Affection thing, and of course the Please Date Other People Because I Can’t Deal With Imaginary Suspicion thing.

Unfortunately, as the days crawled on and turned into weeks, Tony had to admit that not much had changed. 

Granted, he was no longer expected to carve a swathe through the society girls of Manhattan, but the other things – the tight feeling in his gut as he suppressed the urge to touch Steve’s shoulder, the way Steve called him by his surname on the Helicarrier to avoid familiarity…. Those things were still there and didn’t seem likely to change any time soon.

Pepper had, for once, been pleased as punch by the press surrounding Iron Man. It turned out that the good people of Japan assumed that HanmaCo had a damn good reason to be afraid of the SI/Fujikawa partnership; preorder sales for the new mobiles were astronomical in a matter of hours, hiking stock prices on both sides of the Pacific. Justin Hammer’s attempts at parole were t-boned by the news that his companies were still up to their old dirty tricks, giving Tony had the satisfaction of knowing he’d be behind bars just that much longer. 

Weirdest of all, the freaking _Board of Directors_ gave his Tokyo shenanigans their stamp of approval – which Tony heard about secondhand, having of course skipped the meeting. When was the last time they’d liked anything he’d done? It had to be years. _Years._

Pepper went out with Tony and Steve for dinner once a week, her opinion of Steve somewhat improved by his willingness to fly eighteen hours to kiss and make up with her boss-slash-bestie. Rhodey dropped Tony a text now and then, enquiring after his “man-toy” and wanting to know if Steve had come clean to the Avengers yet.

He hadn’t, and as far as Tony could tell it wasn’t even on the menu.

Tony thought about it constantly – telling the others, making things official, Steve calling him his boyfriend. “Stay,” he’d invite Steve post-coitus, curled against him like the world’s handsomest billionaire lamprey. “The floor is locked-down, no one will know.”

Steve had kissed him again, slow and lazy. It was easy to be distracted by that kind of kiss. “And if we assemble tonight?”

“You’d haul ass down the fire escape and no one would know the difference,” Tony ran his fingers against Steve’s sternum, tracing the first few elements of the periodic table, in order.

“You know I don’t sleep well when I’m away from my shield. I need my gear at hand.”

“Bring the gear, next time. _Wear_ the gear,” Tony amended himself, mouth watering at the thought. 

Steve laughed and kissed him again… but pumpkin-ed at midnight once again, Cinderella style.

Tony packed a pipe, stalked out onto the dark balcony, and smoked until the ache in his chest was nothing but a dull, niggling itch.

There it was, he thought to himself. This was their Happily Ever After – or the closest approximation two fundamentally broken people could manage. It might not feel like what Tony had thought it would feel like, but since when had he ever managed a functional relationship? Even his romantic interlude with Pepper had been deeply fractured, her filling the caretaker/boss/coworker roles in addition to the standard issue girlfriendly duties.

Nobody was meant to have everything. Maybe the cost of the whole genius billionaire playboy philanthropist shtick was that he’d never manage to fit it all into one measly life. Maybe there just wasn’t room for all those things plus a healthy love life – it might overload the systems, break the acceptable operational parameters of the known universe.

Tony had settled before, he could settle now. He’d settled for the weapons business, spent decades doing what he was good at despite it being something he was personally ambivalent about… but he’d been happy, in his own way. He’d settled into the ‘wayward heir to the throne’ routine, allowed Obie to coddle and demand in turns… the role of disappointing son was like an old pair of shoes, comfy and easy to slip into. 

He’d settled on lots of things before Afghanistan, but somewhere in that musty, horrible cave things began to change.

Now that he thought of it, post-Afghanistan Tony Stark wasn’t really the settling type. 

He hadn’t settled for apologizing or simply cleaning up the clientele SI was selling weapons to – he had to turn the entire company on its head and refit every operating facility for something greener, something beneficial. He hadn’t settled for maintaining a secret identity when every fiber of his being _wanted_ everything that came with the superhero gig – he announced it to the world when and how he wanted to. 

And really, the whole no-longer-settling thing was probably why he’d shifted from one night stands, down and dirty with minimal baggage, to relationships with people like Pepper and Steve. People who felt too good for him but maybe, just maybe, were what he should have been aiming for all along. 

Tony chewed on his lower lip. The wind was cold as it whipped alongside the tower, tearing his thoughts this way and that.

Pre-Afghanistan Tony would have rolled with the punches, taken what Steve was offering because it was the path of least resistance. Pre-Afghanistan Tony would have drowned the unfulfilling, unsatisfactory edge with flights of whiskey and expensive martinis. Pre-Afghanistan Tony knew how to wear unhappiness like a tailored suit and make it look _good_.

But pre-Afghanistan Tony died in a murky cave and an entirely different person had emerged.

Tony let a trail of smoke leak from his lips, watched it vanish into thing, frigid air.

Something needed to change.

...........................

With that in mind Tony came up with an Idea.

He supposed it was the inventor in him – the part of him that had always been driven to improve and perfect rather than pause and enjoy. 

It was an eternal dilemma, really. A chef declared a dish done and handed it to hungry guests. A painter finished off that last delicate highlight and put a piece up for sale. But an inventor…. An inventor had blueprints. An inventor could duplicate with absolute precision, could reshape and remold, could _improve_.

(Or, fanciful notions aside, maybe Tony was _just that bad_ at interpersonal relationships.)

Either way, there was an Idea, and once the Idea was in his head he simply couldn’t put it to rest. Had the idea been mechanical he would have vanished into his laboratory for weeks on end – but this kind of idea couldn’t be tackled with a wrench and table saw. This kind of idea required _finesse_.

The thing was – well, the Idea was reasonable, that was the thing. It was the logical conclusion, the next step, the sum to every equation presented. It hit all the buttons and once Tony had it in mind there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop thinking about it.

Seriously, it was a problem.

Steve preferred the orderly to the chaotic, the old to the new, and the socially acceptable to the risqué. He’d been born into nothing, came of age in the depression, spoon-fed images of the two-kids-a-dog-and-a-white-picket-fence version of the American dream. Wasn’t that what all the GIs wanted when they got home from the second world war? That was pretty much the reason the fifties existed, after all.

He wanted to be normal. Tony could do normal. 

Probably.

...........................

On December 24th Clint and Natasha were MIA and had been for a week – standard operating procedure when it came to SHIELD operatives. Thor and Jane were doing a tropical Christmas thing at one of Tony’s beach houses, and Bruce was back in India, making the most of the cool post-monsoon weather. Even Pepper was out of town – it was hard as hell to convince that woman to take a vacation, but her brother had a new baby and her mother was on the east coast for Christmas so it had to be done.

The tower stood empty, but didn’t _feel_ empty. The quiet was nice, a lull in the storm that was their highly public, highly violent supervillain-fighting life.

Steve made eggnog – who knew eggnog was make-able? Tony had never tasted stuff that didn’t come out of a carton – and made the world’s most delicious baked chicken. Tony had voted for goose or duck or roast or something Tiny Tim-ish, but Steve promised that Christmas chicken the way his mom made it was worth waiting for.

Tony acquiesced – and damn, but it was delicious.

Beneath the tree was a pile of presents, beyond the massive glass windows a panorama thick with twinkling holiday lights. There were so many more than usual that it changed the familiar shadows that stretched across the plush white carpet of the living room, casting a warmer glow on the interior.

He enjoyed Christmas more now that he had people to shop for. For the first time _ever_ he’d picked out all his own gifts rather than delegating the shopping to Pepper. That was a huge step forward, or something.

The entire evening had a calm, inexorable feeling – almost like he was moving underwater. He was now in the passenger seat and it would be up to Steve to drive - the Idea was in motion, and couldn’t be taken back. 

The change was here.

Tony sipped his eggnog and watched Steve root through the presents, waiting for his hands to close around the box that contained a ring.


	8. An Immodest Proposal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains recreational drug use and a _lot_ of talk about marriage....

Five words.

“I’m sorry, Tony. I can’t.”

Five little words and the world heaved sideways. Tony stared blankly at Steve’s expression, blue and white Christmas lights highlighting his profile in turn. It reminded Tony a little bit of the arc reactor. 

If he was honest with himself, he’d known from the moment Steve opened the box that the answer would be no.

Steve had torn off the paper and looked over at Tony for reassurance – maybe the size of the box made him suspicious? 

Tony had just smiled as if to say _no, don’t worry, go on_ – and the soft, quiet quirk of Steve’s lips set his heart pounding.

Then he’d opened the box and everything went silent.

Steve stared at the ring – it was gorgeous, steel-titanium alloy, simple and strong. Tony watched him look, waited for the grin or the shock or, you know, _any positive reaction at all_ …. When he finally looked up at Tony, Steve’s expression was none of those things. 

It was scared.

“Is this…?”

Tony had prepared a little how-do-I-love-you-let-me-count-the-ways type speech; he’d been saying it to himself in the bathroom mirror before bed, hashing and re-hashing it, _dreaming_ about it. He’d even fake-proposed to DUM-E a few times down in the lab, much to the little robot’s endless delight. Now that the moment was here, though, that slow-motion feeling left the words stuck in his throat. All he managed was a hoarse, nervous “Uhh, y... yeah.”

DUM-E would have said yes. But Steve…

“I’m sorry, Tony. I can’t.”

Tony found himself unable to tear his eyes away. The curved lines of the ring washed yellow and red and green in turn as the lights of the tree continued to cycle, unaware that the world had stopped.

Steve tightened his grip on the box but didn’t touch the ring.

“You…can’t,” Tony repeated at last, voice embarrassingly small in his own ears. “I have to admit I was – hoping for another answer. Can we… talk about why not?”

This wasn’t right. None of this was right. He was hollow; there was nothing but a shell of a man sitting there on the couch, eggnog souring in his gut and obnoxious Captain America slippers itching against his feet. 

Steve didn’t want to. Tony had offered him everything and he’d said _no_.

Steve dropped the ring box to his knee while his other palm ran up his face and back into his pale hair. His breathing had picked up speed – fight or flight reflexes, probably. Tony could guess which one he’d go with. 

“I’m… I’m not sure I want to do that tonight. It’s… it’s Christmas, Tony, can we just –“

“Just what?” Tony asked, anger seeping into his voice despite his best efforts to sound like his heart wasn’t fracturing into a thousand tiny pieces. “Pretend I didn’t just ask you to marry me? Pretend you didn’t just fucking – you didn’t just – “

And oh god, oh no, there was a bump in his voice. A hitch. He was absofuckinglutely _not_ going to cry over this in front of Steve and JARVIS and the Christmas tree and everything.

Fuck that.

“It’s – it’s really sudden, okay? I had no idea you were planning this. You haven’t ever said anything to me about – about something like this,” Steve shrank in on himself as he spoke; each word clearly took a colossal effort. He looked torn between reaching out to touch Tony and fleeing for the exit.

“It was a surprise,” Tony managed raggedly. “This things typically are. Steve – why not? Why don’t you want me?”

“Don’t do this, Tony. You know I want you,” Steve turned now, jaw set. “I just don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to marry _anyone_. If you’d ever talked to me about things before you charge in headlong you’d _know_ I’ve never wanted this.”

“But you’re _you!_ I thought this would make you happy, I thought it would fix things between us – “

Now it was Steve’s turn to be offended. “You think we need _fixing_?”

“Yes!!” Tony’s hands were shaking. A bead of eggnog slid down the side of his glass and plopped onto the blanket – why the fuck was everything in slow motion, why wouldn’t this moment end? He set the drink down and smeared the blob viciously with his thumb, grinding it into the fabric. “You’re still closeted, the team doesn’t know, you told me you were afraid that if you came out and we broke up you’d be dealing with it alone - “

“That doesn’t mean I want to get married! And I – I’m working on all of that, I just haven’t had an opportunity … ”

“It’s been months!”

“I just-"

Tony’s mouth launched a full-scale mutiny. “I don’t fucking get it – You’re Captain America, Mr. 1940’s, white bread and whole milk and everything! Why not marry me? I love you. We make a great team. I could buy you the city of New York if I felt like it - is it because I’m a guy? You would have married Peggy Carter the minute that war ended-"

Steve snapped the ring box shut with a sharp click, his expression shading from uncomfortable to downright angry. “Don’t talk to me about Peggy, Tony.”

“Why not? It’s _true_.”

“Peggy Carter,” Steve slapped the box onto the table and turned on Tony, pointed a thick, calloused finger in his face. “Was an incredible woman, and dragging up her memory now is a low fucking blow.”

Tony blinked at the swear word. “But everyone knows…”

“What, everyone knows what would have happened between us? _I_ don’t even know what would have happened. I’m not some damn comic book character you read about as a kid, Tony, I’m just an ordinary guy and there was a lot going on back then that the historians don’t have a clue about, so just _leave her out of it._ ”

Silence again, Steve’s chest heaving, sweat prickling on Tony’s brow. He was too worked up for this; nervous and a little drunk… he should have let Steve leave. He never should have made the ring; he never knew when to leave well enough alone.

“I… Steve, you’re right, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry.” Tony propped an elbow on the couch and buried his face in his hands, willing his heart to stop hammering in his chest. “I’m a fucking idiot, okay? Just… pretend it never happened. Let’s just forget it all. I won’t ask again.”

He didn’t miss the way Steve’s eyes flickered to the box. There was something in his face that made Tony think he wanted it, that some part of him wanted it… or was that wishful thinking? God, he should have cut himself off. He was drunker than he’d thought.

“Look,” said Steve after what felt like ages. They were both staring into the branches of the massive tree. “I never… I just never wanted to be someone’s husband. When I was scrawny women barely looked at me; I focused on work and the army because I figured I’d never have a girl on my arm – it was kind of nice, I thought, to know nobody’d be crying if I didn’t come home. It seemed so impossible, I never bothered wanting it. And guys?” He huffed out a sharp, snorting laugh. “ _Dating_ was illegal, marriage wasn’t anywhere in the picture.”

Tony didn’t move.

“Then Peggy came along…. And Peggy was a career girl. Half the men she met assumed she slept her way up to her rank, the other half assumed she’d marry as high as she could and get out before the war finished. It was important to her that she be treated as an equal; that wouldn’t have happened if we’d dated publicly.” 

Tony swallowed tightly. He had to admit there was a certain grain of sense to that.

“She talked about it – about wanting to work, about not wanting to prove them right, about not being taken seriously by any of the guys, about what she felt she’d have to give up in order to marry someone. Not just me – anyone. I got to thinking – you know, what’s the point?”

It just kept coming. Steve went on, voice growing smaller. “In the end, she promised me a dance over the radio, right in front of everyone – it was her way of apologizing, I think. For not telling them about us, even if half of ‘em had already guessed. It was… it was her way of telling me how much she cared.”

“It sucks, doesn’t it,” Tony said. A hard ball of misery had settled in his stomach; he felt sick. “Being kept a secret.”

“ _I_ didn’t mind, because it was what _she_ needed from me and I cared about her,” Steve all but growled. Tony wrapped his arms around his knees and pulled them up to his chest. “You know, it’s not easy to talk about this stuff. Don’t make this about you.“

“It was never about me - I really thought it would make you happy. I wanted to show you I was serious about us,” Tony closed his eyes. “I rented the boathouse in Central Park. I thought, you know, New York....”

“You’ve already rented a _venue_?” Now Steve was looking slightly horrified. Christ, had Tony ever been off the mark with this one.

“I wouldn’t have asked if I realized you found the idea so repellant!“ He sounded bitter and pissed and he didn’t care. It wasn’t fair to Steve, and he knew it wasn’t fair, but he just couldn’t stop himself.

“You know what?” Steve’s body coiled, his voice going dark. “I’m not doing this tonight.” 

He stood in one smooth motion, not even glancing at the box as he turned his back on Tony, the tree, and the view - everything. His feet crunched on crumpled wrapping paper as he retreated, leaving Tony alone.

“Merry fucking Christmas,” Tony shouted after him, voice breaking at last.

...........................

The trouble with being brilliant was the _thoughts_.

Tony’s brain moved quickly, flickering from idea to idea in the blink of an eye. Sometimes his head filled with plans and designs stretching in half a dozen different directions while his mouth or hands struggled to keep up, which necessitated one of JARVIS’s primary functions – verbal note taking. Tony could speak twice as fast as he could write, and JARVIS was preternaturally good at parsing what off-hand comments applied to which projects under discussion.

Unfortunately, the mental cacophony wasn’t always symphonic – sometimes it was just _noise_ , ugly, meaningless, repetitive thoughts that no amount of deep breathing or counting to ten could curb. When his day went downhill or a prototype fell apart in his hands or the Board of Directors moved to rename the R&D division of the Los Angeles office after the late Obadiah Stane (of all fucking people, Christ) Tony’s feelings and thoughts and anger would shove up against one another, filling his brain with a low-grade rumble that brought on migraines at best, brain-shattering hangovers at worst. 

When Steve Rogers said _no_ the noise hit an entirely new decibel.

He’d learned to cope over the years with his overactive inner monologue in a variety of creative and not entirely legal ways. Alcohol dulled the edge and brought focus to the rambling routes inside his head; these days Adderall would scratch much the same itch, though when Steve discovered it was to blame for his extremely suppressed appetite he put a stop to Tony’s recreational use of legal amphetamines. 

Cocaine – well, the coke had been a bad idea. Tony didn’t miss that habit, though he did miss the parties.

These days his vice of choice fluctuated between booze – delicious, reliable, and great for maintaining a mid-project buzz/the occasional round of blacked-out inventing – or sweet, dry, thought-numbing weed.

That Christmas he opted for both.

...........................

It took nine days for someone to come looking for him, and that someone was Pepper.

“Tony? To- oh. _Tony_.”

Tony cracked open his eyes and let them settle, upside-down, on his very favorite ginger. His face cracked into something like a smile. It felt unfamiliar – maybe he’d forgotten how to express anything but exhaustion. “Pepper.”

She’d _oh tony_ -ed him. That was never a good sign.

“What’s going on?” she asked, one hand on cocked hip, legs _fantastic_ in seamed stockings (Steve would love that, he thought. Oh, god, steve.) and strappy Jimmy Choo heels. From his position sprawled out on the lab floor Tony got an excellent view of her calves – mmmm. Calves. “We talked about this.”

Tony wrinkled his nose, reaching up to touch his cheeks, momentarily fascinated by the elastic give of skin over bone. He hadn’t shaved since coming down here – the Starkbeard probably looked like some kind of dead animal by now. “Did we?” he asked, vaguely.

Pepper pursed her lips in that way that made her look (God, he would never tell her this) like the world’s sexiest disgruntled librarian. “ _Every single one_ of the doctors we saw pegged your lung capacity as at least 15% lower than normal, even without the arc reactor. Where the hell is your vaporizer?”

God, he loved Pepper. Pepper was amazing. She was everything that was right with the world. She was light and goodness and perfection and fuck, why hadn’t things worked with Pepper? If he’d just been able to hold on to that….

“Is it down here, Tony? If you’re going to smoke, you should be using that.”

“Sir has informed me that _‘There’s no fucking point without the burn, I love that goddamn burn,’_ ” JARVIS offered. Tony half-laughed, half-choked. 

The AI proceeded to drone, drolly, “Yes sir, traitor, donate to community college, etc. etc. Consider me warned.”

Pepper couldn’t help but smile at that – the expression didn't reach her eyes. Had Steve talked to her? Maybe he had. Tony’s words were having a hard time finding his mouth these days.

She reached down and plucked the pipe from Tony’s hand. He scowled up at the ceiling even as JARVIS added: “Ms. Potts, I _have_ been monitoring sir’s pulmonary patterns; all appears well.”

“Thank you, JARVIS. You’re a doll,” Pepper smiled briefly, sucked the inside of her cheek, then folded herself down onto the floor next to Tony. He hadn’t said more than a few words, but she seemed content to wait for the floodgates to burst; she unstrapped her heels, set them neatly up against the leg of the couch, and reached for the lighter.

Tony slid a hand down her leg, stopping at her knee, working circles there with his thumb. She was there, warm, and real – the touch was an anchor, holding him steady. Simple affection, nothing sexual, just a connection between them – and she let him rest his fingers there, even though he didn’t deserve it.

God, he loved her.

“It’s been ages since you smoked with me,” Tony broke his awkward silence at last, watching the spark flicker across her pale features as she lit up and inhaled. Pepper made a face at him, tendrils of smoke leaking from her nostrils.

When she exhaled, it was smooth and expertly done; then again, Tony paid out the nose for the finest strains. “I’m a little busy, Tony.”

“That’s exactly why you need to relax,” he tried for jovial and suave, but even his humor sounded flat.

“Relax?” She snorted. The final puff of smoke from her nose put Tony in mind of a fiery, redheaded dragon. “I’ll try to pencil that in somewhere between running your Fortune-500 company and desperately pawing at the tattered shreds of my personal life.”

“You love SI,” Tony reminded her affectionately as she handed over the pipe. He inspected the bowl critically - still good.

She reached out to run her free hand through his hair. “Of course I do. But it’s … overwhelming, sometimes.”

Tony leaned into her touch, her slender fingers knowing just where to stroke and press to calm him. She was giving him the famed Pepper Side-Eye – that was his cue to spill, he knew. 

He must look absolutely wrecked, but he didn’t feel anything at all. 

Steve said no. Tony had drunk himself unconscious, woken up, smoked a bowl to take the edge of the hangover nausea – wash, rinse, repeat. Except there wasn’t much washing or rinsing to be had. He knew he must smell as filthy as he felt.

“JARVIS told me you’d been locked down here since Christmas.”

“Yeah.”

“And that you asked him not to let anyone interrupt you.”

“Yep.”

“You realize today is January second?”

“Is it? Happy new year.”

Pepper gave him a long, appraising look and then took another hit. “You know I really, really worry about you when you do this. It isn’t safe. If you were hurt down here, no one would ever know.”

“JARVIS would call you.”

“You told him not to.”

“Direct personal damage overrides direct instructions; he would have contacted someone if I’d been in any real danger. You know he monitors my vitals.”

Pepper’s face looked – well, disappointed was probably the word. Tony hated disappointing her, but he couldn’t seem to avoid it most days.

“Did you have to lock the door?”

“Yes.” Tony reached for the pipe, but Pepper didn’t let it go. Instead she clasped her other hand over his and held them there between them. Her eyes asked the question sitting just behind her lips and Tony gave up.

“I asked Steve to marry me,” he said, dropping his eyes. 

“Oh, Tony…”

The pipe clinked on the cold floor and Pepper’s soft, warm body pressed up against him in the gentlest of hugs. Tony let himself press his face into the curve of her neck, let his hands fall to her hips, let the dam break and crack open. She smelled lovely in a way that was uniquely Pepper – familiar, comfortable, safe.

She held him there, making the same soft, soothing noises she used to make when he woke screaming in the middle of the night. She knew him too well to be here, cleaning up his mess again … but there she was.

“Did he tell you why he said no?” She asked at length, when Tony’s shoulders had stopped shuddering.

“He just…” Tony pulled away and smeared his face into his sleeve. “he said he didn’t want to get married. To anyone. Ever.”

Pepper huffed out a sigh. “Tony, I can only imagine how much that hurt – but you know yourself marriage isn’t for everyone.

“I was just so sure he wanted it. I’m never wrong, Pep!”

“You’re wrong _all of the time_ ,” Pepper rolled her eyes. “Maybe your math is infallible, but you misjudge people constantly, Tony. You assume people will analyze and react the same way you do – but you’ve never, ever been typical.” 

Tony had nothing to say to that – she was right, of course.

“So he doesn’t want to get married. I can respect someone who feels that way. You always said you wouldn’t marry,” she quirked a slight, encouraging smile.

“I know. I just… I fucked it up so spectacularly. Maybe if I’d asked in a better way – it’s not fair,” he added, voice edging dangerously close to a plaintive whine. “I never wanted it until _he_ happened, and I was so sure it’d work out –“

“It’s _not_ fair,” she said softly, unlatching his fingers from her blouse and settling into a gentle massage of his palm. “It never is. Tony, you knew he was having issues with commitment, with going public. He hasn’t told the team, did you really think he was ready to get married?”

“I thought it would be comfortable for him,” Tony muttered. “Familiar. I guess I thought it would put our relationship into terms we were both good with.”

“Steve doesn’t come from a stable family – “

“Join the fucking club.”

She ignored him, because she was perfect. “- and he didn’t grow up in a house where marriage worked out well. He probably doesn’t have any positive experiences with it.” 

Tony focused on the sweep of warmth that trailed after her fingers and thumbs. “You think so? He never talks about his mom.”

“We’ve… been spending time together, lately. Sometimes he talks,” Pepper said, simply.

Something about the way she said that made Tony furrow his brow. “You two talk?”

“ _Yeah_ , we talk. He’s a part of your life and I wanted to get to know him. I even referred him to my therapist,” she added with a little laugh. 

Tony felt himself flatten out, thin and papery. His stomach hurt, which meant he’d either smoked waaaaay too much or not _nearly_ enough, he couldn’t be sure which. “Steve is seeing a therapist?” 

That was just another thing he didn’t know about the man he was in love with – how humiliating. 

Pepper’s smile vanished, her lips pursing with awkward embarrassment. “Yeah, he… I’m sorry Tony; I assumed he’d told you. That was a breach of his privacy, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“He didn’t tell me,” Tony pulled his hands away. Pepper’s therapist was one of the most exclusive in Manhattan and Pepper swore by her. It was virtually impossible to get an appointment if you weren’t an existing client, but Pepper excelled at getting her way. “I’m … I mean, I’m glad he has someone to talk to. Even if I kind of wish it was me. But why didn’t he say anything…?”

He dropped his hands into his lap.

“You can’t help him the way a professional can, Tony. You know that.” This time Pepper turned to the pipe for comfort, eventually letting her head loll to the side and rest on his shoulder. Tony let her stay, surprisingly glad for the feel of another human being in his space. It had been a while.

“He knew he wasn’t being fair to you. I think he thought a therapist would help with that.”

Tony felt his stomach churn. On Christmas Eve Steve had said he was _trying_ – this was what he meant. He was trying to work up the nerve to come out; Tony had probably just set him back years by trying to force his hand. 

He loved Steve; he should have trusted him to do things in his own time, even if it meant being unhappy. He should have played the long game.

At length Pepper asked, “Do you think he’ll change his mind?”

Tony shook his head, slowly. “No.”

She didn’t question his assessment. If they _had_ talked before she found Tony down here, evidently nothing had been said that contradicted his assessment. “I’m sorry, Tony.”

“It’s fine. We’re just not the kind of people that can be … you know. Normal.”

“You think a genius billionaire marrying 90 year old WWII vet would constitute a _normal_ relationship?” Pepper tried for a light tone, wiggling her fingers against his ribs. Tony ducked and laughed reflexively – funny, it was easier to laugh with Pepper there, with everything on the table. “Give him time, boss. You never know. And if you aren’t meant to marry the guy, you won’t marry him. Marriage is hardly a prerequisite for happiness, and normalcy is overrated.”

Even though the advice tasted bitter, Tony recognized a bona fide effort to cheer him up with he saw one. Anyway, Pepper never let her hair down these days; he wanted to enjoy the fuck out of her company before Stark Industries swallowed her up again.

“The really embarrassing thing,” he declared, “is that I put $45,000 down in deposits for the reception.”

Pepper choked and devolved into a coughing fit, so Tony snatched the pipe from her hands before she knocked ashes everywhere.

“You _what_??” Pep asked, stunned. “Tony! You hadn’t even asked him!”

“I just – I got excited, Pep. And a little carried away. It was like the fucking custom bunny all over again – it seemed like such a good idea at the time, and I kept thinking of how hot he looks in suits, and...”

“Oh god, that fucking rabbit,” Pepper giggled. Tony liked her giggle – he giggled a bit too. The custom rabbit had not been a high point in his relationship with Miss Potts. “You’re worse than the brides on TV,” she decided. “Booking a venue before you even having a wedding to book. I can’t believe you spent that much money.”

“Blame Pinterest,” Tony rolled his eyes as Pepper’s laughter devolved into absolute gales. “But seriously, if you have anyone lined up for a shotgun wedding and feel like getting hitched in the Central Park boathouse…”

Pepper shook her head at him, her hair falling in lovely curtains around her cheeks. “Come on, Tony. We both know I’m never getting married.”

“Why not? A cute young thing like yourself – “

“Young?! Tony, I’m almost forty.”

“Oh god, well, we all know the world ends at forty – “

“Hush, you.”

Tony allowed himself to be hushed, and there – in the silence – came another Idea.

“Pepper,” he turned to look at her. “Why don’t you want to get married?”

Pepper tucked her knees up to her chin and gave him a faint, wistful smile. “I suppose I wanted to at one point or another. It just never seemed as important as the other things going on in my life. I’m not a Steve or a Peggy – I could have gone that route, it just didn’t shake out that way.”

“So if someone asked you to marry him, would you say yes?”

She snorted. “That’s a pretty big if. I can’t even manage a once-a-month date night.”

Tony turned, reaching for her hands. She seemed to sense the gravitas in his tone before he even spoke – and her eyes widened the moment she realized what he was up to. “Pep.”

“No!”

“Pepper, _think_ about it – “

She slapped at his outstretched hands and the pipe went flying – it had been cashed, anyway. 

“Pep, why not? Think about it for a second.”

“Tony, you are _not_ -”

“Virginia Potts,” Tony said, in his most imperious tone. “Are you really going to throw away a reservation like that? _Forty five thousand dollars_ is a hell of a deposit.”

“Oh my god,” Pepper tore her hands away. “Tony, are you asking me to marry you?”

“Yeah, kind of – I guess I am. Remember how I was Time’s sexiest man alive? I’d marry me.”

“That was _years_ ago. Jesus, this is the first time a man has proposed to me in forty years and it’s my gay ex-boyfriend shopping for a beard. Why is this my life?” Pepper buried her face in her hands – Tony wasn’t sure if she was laughing or crying. Marrying Tony Stark must be a _truly_ terrifying prospect.

“Bisexual,” Tony corrected, patiently. “And I’m pretty sure I’m also your best friend. I know you think I’m just stoned out of my gourd and spitballing here – which, okay, is maybe true – but it would solve a lot of problems.” 

“I fail to see how – “

“Okay, okay, reasoning part one: Steve gets his secret relationship with the perfect cover story, I get to stop dating, you get to stop explaining to your mother why you’re still single.”

She huffed out a little laugh and looked up at him, blinking back tears.

“Reasoning part two: Pepper Potts, are my favorite woman on planet Earth. Since we broke up I’ve been thinking about the whole superhero thing, and how dangerous that line of work is. If something happened to me, I want you to have SI. You’ve put too many years of work into the company for you to have no legal redress if I croak and the Board of Directors decides to fire you. Marrying me would give you a pretty solid legal claim to all of my assets.”

Her mouth fell open, then slowed closed, her lips firming into a thin line. He knew that expression - she didn't want him to talk like that, but the thought had crossed her mind as well. She was a brilliant woman, as ambitious as she was hardworking; but a job was just a job. A connection to the Stark family would make the company _hers_.

Tony gave her a wan little smile. “We both know it’s possible – hell, it’s _probable_. Just a matter of time, really.” 

Pepper licked her lips and looked away. “Did it ever occur to you that I might want to marry someone I love romantically? Marrying a platonic friend kind of defies the point of marriage.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Tony grumbled. “Marriage is partnership. Millions of people have arranged marriages, treating it as a contract and not a romantic attachment. Plenty of the world’s power couples are in marriages of convenience; we’d be pretty fucking convenient.”

“Say – just say – I did agree to marry you. As a _favor_. If one of us decides we want a real relationship –“ 

“We break it off, no questions asked, design a solid prenup for that possibility. Pepper, just think about it, it’d be -”

Pepper held up her hands, a sign of surrender. Tony gave himself a mental fistbump. “Look, I'm too intoxicated to give this matter the amount of thought it deserves; I will _think_ about it on _one_ condition.”

“Yeah?”

“You get the hell out of this lab and go speak to Steve.”

“Wh-“

“You owe him the real conversation you’ve been hiding from down here.” Pepper ground the heel of her palms into her dry eyes. “You’re not well. This isn’t healthy. You may talk to Steve and decide marrying me is the stupidest idea you’ve ever had – but I’ll think about your offer as it stands now and only because I love you.”

"I know," said Tony, softly. Pepper smiled gently and gave his fingers a squeeze.

She knew what he really meant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. [What did I do, what did I do to get my mind stuck on you?](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYGJur3JSvA)
> 
> 2\. sorry for all the marriage!feels, I have a lot of thoughts on the legitimacy of the institution of marriage and they all sort of wormed their way into this story. I think exploring the labels applied to platonic and romantic relationships is interesting, but I wasn't sure if fic is a space in which people enjoy getting philosophical. Even so, I tried to strike a balance of sad/sweet/funny and head/heart in this chapter. I hope it was worked!


	9. Where There's Smoke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains drug abuse & terrible decisions being made under the influence.

Tony pressed his head against the smooth side of the elevator, worrying his lower lip with his teeth. The wall felt cold; or maybe that was just his nerves at work? Either way, his arms were gooseflesh. “JARVIS, is Steve in his quarters?”

“Captain Rogers is present, sir.”

He was really too high for this. Weed brought out an uncomfortable sort of honesty in Tony, and being honest with Steve was what had brought on this argument in the first place. It would be better to retreat upstairs, sober up, plan his method of attack – maybe speak to Steve somewhere he’d have a home field advantage…

 _Don’t be a coward, Stark,_ he told himself. _This is your tower. You can talk to Steve in his quarters if you want, you’re a grown-ass man and you don't need a security blanket._

Except that he sort of did – sort of absolutely did. His blanket was made of tasty, tasty controlled substances.

 _Too high for this._ Too high, too tired, and he was right – in the shiny surface of the elevator wall he could see the grim, untrimmed lines of his beard and barely recognized himself. He should wait, shower, shave…

The tower’s private elevator was the spine of the building and opened up on each Avengers’ private floor to an entryway decorated to the taste of their resident; despite his better judgment Tony stumbled awkwardly out onto Steve’s floor. Usually when he visited Steve he took the stairs down – a chunk of the building he affectionately thought of as the fire escape of assignation. It was weird to stand at the front door while feeling like a stranger.

To gain a little peace of mind Tony made himself walk, very carefully, along the seams between the square tiles that lead up to the door in a makeshift sobriety test.

He passed, more or less. 

What would he say when Steve opened the door? ‘Sorry I want to spend my life with you?’ Or maybe ‘Sorry I thought I was good enough for you?’ Even to his ears that sounded embarrassing, self-pitying and overblown. More than a small fraction of him wanted to beg forgiveness and agree to any terms Steve might place on their relationship if it meant getting back those warm, solitary moments in the kitchen or lab, if it meant wrestling into bed and getting pinned in the best way possible… but that wouldn’t be what Pepper wanted. She thought they needed to talk.

He was pretty okay at talking.

Tony steeled himself, raised his hand to knock –

And the call to Assemble shook through the tower.

“What, now?! For _fuck’s sake,_ ” he groaned.

He could imagine Steve inside, leaping to his feet and pulling the Captain America costume off the pegs in the bedroom. Tight leather, Kevlar, the boots snapping and zipping, gloves stretching into comfortable, familiar lines pressed snug against Steve’s skin. Any moment now, he would open the door and see Tony standing there, blitzed out of his mind, beardy and unshowered - 

Tony fled.

There was no other way to put it – he hauled ass back to the elevator and jammed the button for his personal level over and over again until the doors slid shut. When he reached the penthouse the Iron Man armor hovered in a thousand pieces, swirling in his living room in a shape vaguely reminiscent of a tornado. At Tony’s command the tiny repulsors keyed to his subdermal implants and affixed themselves to his body, linking into the ports installed beneath his flesh. 

He came online.

Iron Man had that effect on him – it was that first cold gasps of air when you’d been held underwater; it was freedom of motion after ages of confinement. The armor allowed the strength of his body could match the strength of his mind, and it made him feel invincible.

Tony flexed his hands, felt the armor creaking and whirring around him, a technological second skin.

“Sir,” JARVIS murmured in his ear. “It is inadvisable to operate the armor under the influence of any type of mind-altering medication.”

He’d never flown Iron Man while stoned – or he had, probably, just not this high. It was probably tremendously irresponsible. It had the feel of something like that – something that was forbidden and extremely entertaining, something he’d have leapt at in his younger years.

Breaking the rules always made Tony feel better.

“Let’s consider this a test run,” he murmured easily, striding towards the balcony.

“Test runs do not generally involve live combat scenarios,” JARVIS observed, deep disapproval in his tone. “I have been asked to inform Miss Potts should you attempt to operate the suit under the influence of alcohol or another controlled substance.”

“C’mon, J, it’ll be fine. I’ve operated in worse shape than this.”

“Resulting in the installation of the automatic breathalyzer function after the semi-public humiliation that was your last birthday party in Malibu,” JARVIS observed, mildly. 

“That was different, I was _dying_. Bruce rolls out stoned _all the time._ ” Okay, that sounded a little bit petulant, but shit. He hadn’t programed this maternal streak into JARVIS’ personality; maybe Pepper was rubbing off on the AI?

“Testing has shown that Dr. Banner’s transformation metabolizes any substances he’s imbibed when his molecular structure begins to shift. Your current - ”

“If my reaction times are too slow, _you_ can compensate. I’ll roll into autopilot and let you take over,” Tony offered, which he thought was really quite generous. “They need me out there. I can’t let Cap, Hulk and Thor take on all of New York’s baddies.”

“Sir, the level of risk - ”

“ – is totally acceptable. Let’s DO THIS!”

Tony jumped out the window, free falling half a dozen stories before letting the thrusters kick in and jettisoning away from the Avengers tower.

...........................

Okay, so he was slow.

It wasn’t just his reaction time out in the field; JARVIS did a bang up job of anticipating his maneuvers and compensating for Tony’s sloppiness, but the difference was noticeable. Thank god they were fighting something relatively routine - if Doombots weren’t such predictable adversaries Iron Man would have really been in trouble.

Slower than his reflexes was his brain – the syrupy, comfortable languor meant split-second decisions took much longer to make. His response time simply lagged, like a computer running low on RAM. Cap was getting audibly frustrated with his inability to track the fight lightning-quick changes on the field correctly, his voice snapping orders into Tony's ear with growing irritation as the battle progressed.

To make matters worse, Natasha and Clint were still away on SHIELD business. The Avengers were down to four, outnumbered, and Tony really, _really_ couldn’t slip out of combat to sober up. There wasn’t anyone to take his place.

Part of his brain clung to that thought - maybe he could call Rhodey? No, still in the South Pacific. What about.... 

“Left, sir. _Other left_ ,” JARVIS wheeled his left hand back, sharply, and blasted one of the bots in the face. As the pieces rained down against the sidewalk, Tony swept down behind Cap and assumed a position standing back to back, where he easily took out a rank of blank, sneering robots attempting to flank their fearless leader.

God, Steve was a wonder to behold in combat, the form-fitting Captain America uniform almost rippling with the flex and pull of his muscles. It was distracting on a regular day, but today?

“Iron Man, stay high," Cap ordered, bringing his shield down and severing a stray Doombot’s limb in a shower of sparks. 

Tony couldn’t help it, he let out an irreverent laugh that was _almost_ a giggle.

“That’s an _order_ ,” Cap was scowling beneath his cowl; he was stressed out by the odds and Tony wasn't helping. Thor, who’d vanished while depositing a few lucky civilians behind the slowly forming police perimeter, took that moment to reappear and put his hammer to good work. With Cap’s flank suitably protected, Tony sped upwards again obediantly.

Despite the tactical relevance of the command he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe Steve was trying to keep him at arm’s length. Had he noticed his poor performance? Did he want the distance between them, or was Tony just being paranoid? Steve wouldn’t let his issues bleed into his role as Captain America, would he? Was he reading too much into this? 

“Focus, sir,” JARVIS advised, irritation in his tone. The suit’s autopilot twisted his body to the left as a blast of energy zipped by his right ear. 

Tony wondered how many times JARVIS had saved his life... probably more times than he could count, and certainly more times than he was aware of.

“Right… right,” Tony agreed, swallowing. Maybe this hadn’t been such a great idea.

The attack was routine, but while the Avengers picked off Doombots in Brooklyn a volley of sirens in the distance led Tony to flick up a speech-to-text feed of local police scanners. Something else was going on - which made sense. Doom might not be the sharpest villain in the world, but even he had eventually tired of throwing his robots away on random attacks in the city.

“Cap, the bots are a distraction – looks like the real target is the Chase Bank in Times Square. Newsfeeds scrolling reports of armed robbery and civilian hostages,” Tony half-read the screens even as he leveled his wrist and clipped the jetpack of a bot on his left. The mechanized terror spiraled out of control and plowed a deep trench into the pavement.

“Figures,” Cap muttered, brusque. A few seconds ticked by when a grunt and a grind of metal audible over the comlink. “We need men on the ground here, but there’s a chance they’re trying to spread us thin. Iron Man, can you get there?”

Tony’s stomach twisted. He could get there, sure – but holy fucking Christ, he didn’t need to be negotiating hostage releases while stoned out of his mind. He was starting to think operating the suit had been a terrible idea - Doombots were one thing, but a situation like that where civilian lives at stake, where careful finesse was all that might prevent a loss of life…

He swallowed. “You might wanna handle that one, Cap.”

Another clang and a small explosion followed - Tony watched Cap judo throw a bot in Thor’s direction. The unlucky attacker was struck homerun style by Mjolnir and transformed into a platter of slag instantaneously. “Iron Man, time is of the essence, I need you there. You can handle it.”

Tony's heart dropped into his stomach before he made up his mind.

“Here, I’ll drop you off,” Tony decided, sweeping in over Thor’s head and hooking his arms around Captain America’s torso. His acceleration was gentle – he couldn’t risk dislocating one of Steve’s shoulders or jarring the shield from his vice-like grip.

Cap flipped to a private channel, swearing in his ears and kicking futilely as his feet left the ground. “What the – Tony, what the hell are you doing!”

“Defying orders, I guess. Orders, and also gravity! I'm having a defiant sort of day.”

“Put me down!”

“I will once you’re in shield-tossing range.” Tony tried to sound flippant but it came out sounding more tired than anything else. Steve was going to be pissed - even more pissed. But _Steve_ was capable of saving lives today, and Tony had been responsible for enough deaths through his own negligence. He was new at this whole recognizing-your-limits-and-respecting them thing, but it had to be done.

Cap twisted unhappily until Iron Man’s velocity made wriggling a challenge. They shot up into the clouds over Brooklyn, JARVIS setting a course for the top of the bank’s neighboring skyscraper 

“You’re so fucking infuriating sometimes, why can’t you just _listen_ \- “

Wow, Steve was dropping the f-bomb. Tony really _was_ screwed. 

“Steve, just –“ Tony ground out, the wind whistling past Steve’s communicator and echoing in his helmet. “We both know I am shit at knowing my limits, but _I can’t do this today._ I haven’t eaten, I haven’t – I haven’t slept, since –“ his voice cracked and okay, it was definitely the drugs making him overly emotional, definitely. Ugh. “Look, if you have me negotiate this, _people will die_. Maybe I could manage on a normal day, but that day is not today.”

“Tony-”

“I’ll come back you up once Brooklyn is taken care of; you just… you don’t want me there, now. I can’t do it.”

Something in his voice made Steve twist and look up at him, eyes dark and stormy beneath the furrowed V of his brows. Tony knew Steve couldn’t see him looking back, not through the backlit facials lits of the armor, but he looked anyway.

Steve’s boots hit the ceiling and he twisted his arm until his fingers were wrapped tight-knuckled around Tony’s gauntlets. “Iron Man,” not ‘ _Tony,_ ’ they were back on professional terms – “if personal issues have compromised your ability to fight on this team, you need to go back to the tower.”

“Like hell I’ll – “

Cap squeezed harder and a little pressure gauge popped up in the corner of Tony’s vision, conveying tensile warnings. It was easy, sometimes, to forget how much strength Steve kept reined in beneath his calm exterior. The next words he spoke were nearly a growl.

“If you can’t do your part you’re a liability to this team. You’ve been off today – you could be hurt, or someone could get hurt trying to pick up your slack, trying to protect you. I can't have either of those things.”

Tony yanked his arms free, staring at Steve. “And if you get hurt because I’m not there to get your back?”

Cap opened his mouth to respond just as a sky-cycle zipped past them; lo and behold, a lithely familiar figure leapt from its seat. She flipped gracefully in air and landed in a three-point pose shamelessly stolen from one of Iron Man's TIME Magazine covers, then stood, dusted her hands off, and smirked at them both. 

“Sorry to interrupt your little lover’s spat, but wasn’t there a hostage crisis that needs tending to?”

“Nat!” 

“Black Widow!”

Tony’s chest tightened with relief – God, it was good to see her. Cap must have felt the same way; he stepped forward and gave her shoulder a squeeze, relief written across every surface of his face.

“Hey Thor, step left!” Hawkeye’s voice crackled over the comlinks as the skycycle shot southeast towards the Brooklyn Bridge. There was a hiss, an explosion, and a chuckle in their ears. “Goddamn, but I’m good.”

“Widow, let’s go,” Cap gathered himself and flashed Nat a hard, more businesslike smile. “Iron Man, drop Widow on the rooftop; I’ll distract while she infiltrates.”

“Sir yes sir,” Widow smirked, stepping up to wrap her arms around Iron Man's shoulders. Tony blasted up and over to the next rooftop without another word.

As he did, he took care to modulate the thruster on his left boot, precisely imitating a short in the repulsor tech. (It was a good imitation – Tony knew his tech inside out, and had on more than one occasion fought with a short somewhere in the system.) He dipped, bobbed, and swore over the public line, landing with a slight stumble. He couldn't feel Natasha's arms tightening through the armor, but the twitch of her body language told him it was not her most pleasant flight.

“Iron Man?” Widow’s face looked slightly green when her feet hit the deck again, safely atop the Chase bank building. 

“Shit,” Tony muttered, half to himself. “I’m shorting – maybe a loose connection on the tertiary support wiring? I just fucking upgraded that shit –“

“Iron Man, do you need assistance?” Cap asked, voice brittle.

“Nah. You got this covered? We’re just a few blocks from the Tower... I could swap this leg joint, can you go on without me for a few?”

Translation: _I’m sorry I’m an ass, I’ll do as you asked if you’ll let me leave the field clad in the ignominious shreds of my dignity._

There was a moment of silence, then came Captain America’s voice again – his tone changed in absolutely no way whatsoever. “Go ahead, Iron Man. We have this covered. Clint, Iron Man is off the field, you’re cleared for use of EMP arrows.”

“Hell yes I am,” Clint cackled; a few moments later he let out at whoop of triumph and half of Brooklyn browned out. 

Black Widow gave Tony a strange, suspicious look – she wasn’t buying his bullshit. Granted, if she and Clint had come in from a distance, they might have seen Tony flying with Cap – perfectly level and smooth. Tony didn’t answer her unspoken query, just made a show of kicking the boot up against a corner as though banging on precision technology ever helped anyone.

"Iron Man," she said at last. "Be careful." 

With that, she vanished into an air duct and Tony turned for home.

In his helmet, JARVIS mused: “Sir, I am of course far too well-mannered to say _I told you so…_ ”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony grumbled, his heart pounding in his ears. “Fuck, JARVIS, why is this my life? Why do I make things so fucking hard for myself?”

“I ask myself that all the time, sir.”

...........................

Pepper was waiting for him in the penthouse, fists clenching and unclenching at her sides; she was _far_ more terrifying than the average Doombot on a good day - when she was really and truly angry she could give Doom himself a run for his money.

Iron Man landed gracefully on the balcony’s landing pad and strode in through the automated floor-to-ceiling glass doors, the automated systems of the penthouse swirling around him. Tony cut off the disassembling elements and left the faceplate down, as if a metal panel could ever hope to shield him from Pepper’s wrath.

“What the fuck were you doing?” Pepper asked furiously, the lines around her eyes tight with worry. After months of living with the Iron Man armor she was completely un-intimidated by the suit’s blank façade… she moved into his space immediately, chin tipped up, a furious light in her eyes. “After – you were just – “

Tony couldn’t scrape up an excuse together – he had, after all, just left her side. “I thought I could deal with it; my tolerance is much higher than yours, Pep, and JARVIS has autopilot capabilities that would serve as -” 

“You have a responsibility – “

“To protect people?” he finished, hopefully.

“NO! You have a responsibility to use your suit in a sane way, Tony! God, I can’t believe you would do that, after your birthday party went public – after how many times did Senator Stern throw your flagrant disregard for safety in your face? Do you have _any_ idea how many lawsuits I’d be dealing with if people knew you were flying under the influence again?! What if you’d killed someone? What if your teammates had been hurt because you were too out of it to fight? You can’t keep doing this!”

Tony licked his lips and opened his mouth behind the smooth metal mask, but Pepper’s hand went up commandingly; she knew his patterns, knew his tendency to dredge the bottom of the barrel for any available excuse. It figured she’d be able to read him without seeing an inch of skin. 

“Drunk driving is a crime, Tony, but you’re staggering around New York in a tin can with enough fire power to level midtown – this is shameful, even for you.”

Ouch.

“They needed me,” he tried.

“No one needs you like this,” she bit back. 

“I just…. I wanted - _areyougoingtotellSteve?_ ” 

Well, that wasn’t at all what he’d meant to say.

"I should!"

"You can't - "

“Why the hell shouldn’t I?! He deserves to know if he’s going to be fighting beside you! He should bench you, just to protect you from yourself! I don’t know what’s going on with you two, but if you can’t get a handle on yourself it’s _got_ to stop!”

“I came back,” Tony said, irritation prickling in the back of his brain. Sure, he’d been in the wrong, but the Avengers were none of Pepper’s business. She’d had a chip on her shoulder about his involvement ever since they’d dated and Iron Man had come before Tony Stark. Of course _she’d_ want him benched. 

“I thought I could handle it, and when I realized I was being a fucking idiot and a liability I left them on the field and came back of my own volition.” Mostly. He liked to think he’d have backed out whether or not Steve demanded it. “All things considered, it might actually be the most responsible thing I’ve ever done.”

He finally lifted the faceplate, letting Pepper see the exhausted bags beneath his eyes in a blatant play for pity. “I will never, ever try that again. It was stupid. It was - it was worse than stupid.”

Pepper stood with arms across her chest, her stance wide and defensive. Nothing about her was relaxed, sympathetic, or even remotely affected by Tony’s tired expression. 

“I want overrides in JARVIS,” she demanded. “I want him able to shut the suit down if you’re not in your right mind. I don't care if another nuke is falling on Manhattan, you have no business being out there like this.”

“He already calls you -”

“As a _courtesy._ And do you know how horrible it is, knowing you’re out there and incapacitated and being able to do absolutely nothing?! I was so desperate I tried Steve’s mobile while he was on the field, and we both know that’s a pipe dream.”

Tony flushed, panic closing its fingers around his throat. “Oh, god. Please tell me you didn’t leave him a message.” 

“I didn’t.”

“And you won’t tell him – “

“Tony, you can’t keep doing this,” Pepper managed, lips pressed into a thin line. “I can’t – _this_ is why I left you. You fall apart over and over, you just keep making the same dangerous decisions over and over – you’re a _grown man,_ when are you going to start acting like it?”

His mouth fell open in shock.

“ _Be_ a hero or quit trying. _Be_ with Steve or just quit trying! You act like these things just happen to you when you create your own misery with every terrible choice you make.”

“Pepper ….”

“Don’t _‘Pepper’_ me. When your stupid decisions finally get you killed,” her voice wavered but her eyes were hard – no tears, no running mascara, just pure unadulterated anger. It was the expression of someone who had contemplated loss for long enough to see it as an inevitability “I’m going to be the one picking up the pieces you leave behind. I hope you know I will never, ever forgive you if you die doing something as shitty and _stupid_ as what you did today.”

With that, she swept to the elevator without a backwards glance, phone already pressed to her ear. For a moment Tony thought she was calling Steve back – but as the elevator slid open he heard her address her chauffer.

A wash of sick, self-loathing relief swept through his body; he’d decimated his friendship with Pepper, now the only thing left was the team.

Silently, he palmed his helmet and ordered the armor to disengage.

...........................

In the end, Steve didn’t approach Tony at all. He simply called Iron Man upstairs for debriefing. 

Tony made a point of skipping the SHIELD debriefs as often as possible as a matter of principle, but the Avengers sessions were more relaxed; everyone on the team was loose and languid, flushed with success after having survived another encounter with the crazies of the world. Usually there was some type of food – usually hand-delivered from whatever greasy spoon was next on their communal list. They were comfortable things that tended to dissolve into movie nights, swimming sessions, or whatever other unofficial team-bonding activity Steve or Thor could enthusiastically suggest.

Tony didn’t feel much like being part of the team, not today. 

Given that he was already in trouble the temptation to skip the debriefing was almost overwhelming… but he didn’t need to compound his poor performance by refusing a direct request from Steve. 

Attending a meeting (probably) wouldn’t kill him… unless Steve realized how stoned he'd been. If nothing else, showing up would give him a chance to suss out the general mood and might help him piece together the best way to handle Steve.

Unsurprisingly, Tony was the last to enter the common floor. He’d taken the time to wash his face and run a comb through his hair, but it didn’t do much to take the edge off his rough appearance. He schooled his expression with practice ease, keeping his eyes hard and sharp and silently daring the other Avengers to say a word about his looks.

None of them did, though Natasha’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. She glanced from him to Steve and her mouth set in a firm, unhappy slant.

Steve, though. Steve stared at Tony like he’d seen a ghost, his brows peaked in an unhappy pinch, strong hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. Tony wondered if he was resisting the urge to reach out and touch; it felt good in a twisted sort of way to see the reflection of his own weariness in Steve’s eyes.

“Alright,” Steve started, voice rough. He swallowed and started again, trying to find his “I’m The Boss” voice. “First off, I want to say good work out there – those who began the fight showed great endurance in the face of intimidating odds, and those who finished the fight have clearly mastered the art of dramatic entrances.” Clint cheered and Natasha rolled her eyes (though in a pleased sortofway).

“I….” 

His eyes settled on Tony again, tracking over his face, the lines of his jaw, the bags beneath his eyes. Something in the blonde seemed to snap and Steve righted himself out of his round, casual posture. He squared his shoulders, tipped up his chin, and said: “… before this goes on, there are apologies that need to be made. They should have been made before, but – but sometimes it’s tough to see the forest for the trees.”

The blood rushed out of Tony in a wash, a sick feeling cumulating in the pit of his stomach. Was Steve calling him out? Here, in front of the whole team? 

“Avengers,” Steve said resolutely, hands curled at his sides. “I’m sorry. As your leader I should be setting an example – I should be honest, I should be earnest, I should be available and supportive when you need me to be. I’ve failed at all of those things, lately, and it's been making teamwork difficult for all of you.”

Clint glanced over at Bruce while Thor lifted a mug to his mouth, expression calm if wary. Natasha was very, very still.

“All of you - but especially Iron Man. Tony and I are.... well, we're seeing each other,” Steve said, softly. “We have been for months. I was embarrassed by it and wanted to keep it private, so I pressured Tony into keeping it a secret.”

Tony’s brain flatlined.

“In addition to isolating my best friend in order to keep my secrets, I’ve let the situation affect my field work. I’m not meeting the standards I set for members of the Avengers – my judgment has been compromised, and all of you –" his eyes flicked to Tony and stayed there, “have been put at risk for it.”

The other Avengers were responding, moving and looking at one another and muttering a few shocked words - none of it registered. Tony's world shrank down to Steve, the blue of his eyes, the way stood alone with grief written into the corners of his face.

“That's why I’m resigning command of the Avengers, effective immediately.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long to post up - just one chapter more!!


	10. Photo Finish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WE ARE FINALLY THROUGH! Thank you all for reading and writing so many thoughtful and supportive comments. This is the first lengthy chaptered fic I've written in literal years - nearly ten, tbh - and it's been a great reminder of what makes writing fiction in a fandom setting so much fun. You guys are great!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would be completely remiss without thanking AGAIN my dear friend Tea ([geniusbillionaireplaygirlphilanthropost](http://archiveofourown.org/users/teaberryblue/pseuds/geniusbillionaireplaygirlphilanthropist)) for her patient alpha-ing in the form of writers-block destroying suggestions and chat sessions, not to mention her work as a beta. Without her this story would not have been possible, and she is a superlative writer in her own right; I encourage you to check out her loosely related Avengers fic ([I Thought You Always Wanted To Get Married At The Boathouse](http://archiveofourown.org/works/962309)) as well as her phenomenal ongoing piece of letter-fiction called [Dear Captain America](http://archiveofourown.org/works/963943/chapters/1889989). 
> 
>  
> 
> With that said, I give you chapter ten.

The room erupted into noise all at once – Bruce dropped his pool cue and began talking in animated tones at Tony, while Clint jabbed an accusatory finger at Natasha. Nat just shook her head with a thin little frown on her mouth; Thor banged on the table, roaring his outrage at the idea that the Avengers should follow another leader.

Tony had to lean back against the wall for strength, lips parted, as the bottom dropped out of his world. Steve was an island of unhappy stillness in the middle of the chaos, glancing over at him and attempting a tight, uncomfortable smile.

Had he… had he really just….

Natasha, for all her calm observation, was the one who raised a hand and managed to silence the room. She so rarely sought attention it was hard not to give her the floor when she had something to say.

“Steve,” she said, softly enough that the others had to range in to listen, Bruce canting a hip against the arm rest and Clint draping himself over the back of the couch, “How many people know about you and Tony?”

“Uh,” the big blonde muttered. “Just Pepper, and uh – and Colonel Rhodes.” His eyes flickered up to Tony, almost as though he were looking for permission to talk about it.

“Well, thank you for telling us,” she said, with a slight smile.

“I should have…”

Nat raised her hand again, and this time even Steve fell quiet.

“I presume you had a good reason to keep it a secret? I knew, but I doubt the others picked up on it.”

“You knew – I knew you knew, I knew there was something - ” Clint sputtered. “That’s a complete and total violation of our code, woman, not telling me something like – “

Nat made a _very_ rude gesture at her partner, then smiled again at Steve. “I’ve watched you two stumble over each other for months, overreacting and under reaching in turns.”

Now Steve’s faintly pleased look had gone sour. Tony, jerked out of his stunned silence by Natasha’s shifting tone, forced life back into his limbs and closed the distance between himself and Steve, touching his elbow before dropping a hand to his. After a moment’s hesitation, Steve relaxed his fist and let Tony thread their fingers together.

A shiver of pleasure slid up Tony’s spine at the touch – a free touch, a touch in front of the team.

“Steve, Tony makes shit decisions, sometimes. Most of the time, really. You’re not responsible for them even if your choices influence them – he’s an _adult_. Mostly.”

Steve was clearly struggling with this concept – Tony could feel it in his tense posture. He was a man used to being in charge, to commanding and controlling – of course he’d feel responsible for the decisions his teammates made, in or outside of combat. “I knew he would react badly, I could have – at any point – said something to –“

“An _adult_ ,” Nat interrupted, sharply. “He was out of it today; he should have recognized his compromised ability and made the call to stay in.” With that she gave Tony a Look; it was a look that said _I know what was going on_ , and it left him shrinking into Steve’s side. 

Nat knew – but she wasn’t spilling. That was something to consider later – why would she cover for him? She’d been put in just as much danger as the rest of them….

“She’s right, Steve.” Tony bit the inside of his cheek. “I shouldn’t have been in the field today. Please don’t let a poor decision on my part affect your presence on the team. If anything, I should be the one who -”

Steve immediately raised a hand to protest. “No, Tony, we need Iron Man out there. Today was only a small part of my reasoning-”

“Neither of you should quit! Christ!” Clint groaned, shoving his forehead into his palm.

“I agree with our gifted marksman,” Thor nodded, succinctly.

“You may be our team leader – and sure, you could have come out to us sooner, but it’s really none of our business who you sleep with or when you share it. Tony’s used to being in the spotlight; his idea of a relationship’s normal progression is …. questionable.”

“Hey,” Tony protested, pleased to hear Steve’s voice mirroring his own.

“Didn’t you once let a stripper try on your armor to get her to sleep with you?” Clint’s eyebrows arched up.

“...just the gauntlets,” Tony winced as Steve startled next to him. Oops.

“I think what Natasha is trying to say, Steve, is that nobody here resents the fact that you didn’t tell us. How many months has this gone on?” Bruce said, softly. “If you were treating us differently because of your relationship with Tony, I think we would have noticed by now.”

“Nat noticed,” Steve muttered.

“Natasha’s powers of observation dwarf those of most mortal souls, she cannot be used fairly in protest!” Thor rumbled. “Captain, it is natural for warriors to bond in the course of their struggles together. I have grown close to many a great fighter in my own time.”

“Huh,” said Tony, filing that mental image away for future consideration.

Bruce pushed his glasses up. “Steve, the Avengers need you. You’re our leader – without you we’re nothing. No one else here could draw the team together, could plan and execute the way you do.”

“I… actually, I thought Natasha would do well,” Steve said, almost shyly. “Sometimes I think she knows us better than we know ourselves.”

Natasha glanced down at her nails casually and then looked up at Steve through her dark, shapely lashes. “Nope.”

“But – “

“Steve,” Natasha smiled, teeth very white. “If your criteria for leadership is ‘not having slept with a teammate’, most of us are ineligible.”

Steve’s eyes widened slightly. “You’re – you –“

“Hey, we go back a long way,” Clint shrugged, as though these things simply happened when you knew someone for long enough. 

Raising a hand, Steve sighed and touched the bridge of his nose. “It’s – it’s more recent history that I’m concerned with, Clint.”

Bruce, still leaning against the couch, coughed into his hand nervously.

Tony’s brows shot upwards, while the archer looked up and guffawed. “What?! Really, when did you –“

“It was – it was only,” Bruce started, cheeks pinking.

“I was afraid of Bruce,” Natasha finished, matter of fact. Her teeth were very white as she smiled. “After New York, after everything that happened on the helicarrier. I thought it might be helpful to get to know his human side.”

She flashed Bruce a fond look and Clint shook his head. “I am _so_ out of the loop. I guess it must have worked.”

“Am I the only one present who has not engaged in sexual congress with a team member?” Thor asked the room, unhappily. “My dearest Jane assures me that her so-called ‘monogamy’ is normal in relationships of this realm, else I would offer my – “

“Perfectly normal,” Bruce laughed nervously. “Perfectly.”

Steve looked helplessly at Tony, who squeezed his fingers softly.

“I’m seeing a therapist,” Steve blurted. “That’s the other – the other reason. I’m not sure I’m in a good… place, right now. I started seeing a psychologist.”

“Raise your hand,” Clint called, “if you’ve ever been to a shrink.”

Immediately every hand in the room went up, save Thor’s.

“Another earth ritual I have yet to participate in,” the burly blonde sighed. “Though the lovely Jane often tells me I would benefit from a few rounds with someone capable of providing emotional counsel, generally regarding my wayward brother….”

Steve looked around the room, clearly startled. “Really?”

“I’ve been in therapy on and off since I was six,” Tony shrugged. 

“Well yeah, we all know Tony’s daddy issues have daddy issues,” Clint pointed out, earning a rude one-finger salute from Tony’s side of the room. “What? It’s true – and you _did_ almost die last summer. Again. Nat was out for six weeks on leave after New York… not to mention how long it took SHIELD to deem her stable enough to enter the field in the first place.”

Nat shrugged. “Who do you think suggested I face my fear of the Hulk?”

“My shrink never tells _me_ to get laid,” Clint grumbled, tired. He looked away for a moment, expression gone brittle. “I was benched for three and a half months post New York. Full psych eval plus grief counseling. Even before that, though – I’m a sniper. Snipers are prone to snapping. Always with the shrinks.”

There was a moment of tight, uncertain tension. “I didn’t realize…”

“You and Thor are the only two not to see someone after New York, and Thor was on another planet,” Clint said, brusquely. “You don’t have to walk away to get your shit together.”

Tony tightened his grip on Steve’s hand. “You’re trying,” he said, quietly. “You’re trying because you care. I haven’t been very… fair, with my expectations of you. I keep forgetting most people don’t handle – “

“…or fail to handle…” Clint muttered,

“ – things the way I do. Also, fuck you, Clint. I suck at this,” he finished, lamely.

“Tony,” Steve pulled him in, sliding his hands up Tony’s biceps and leaning in to press a kiss to his forehead. Tony let his fingers lace behind the other man’s neck, feeling the flex and rumble of words and motion tremble through his fingertips. “I’m sorry,” he said, tucking Tony against his chest in a close, comforting hug. 

“Me too,” Tony whispered, burying his smile in the smell of Steve.

“I’m not,” Clint punched Natasha lightly in the shoulder. “That was possibly the most profound thing I’ve ever heard come out of Stark’s mouth. Now, onto more serious matters: DINNER. Are we on for pizza or Chinese? I gotta say, I’m kind of feeling the Chinese.”

Steve looked up, bewildered, at Clint’s change of subject. “That… what, that’s it?” 

“What else do you need?” Clint asked, brows peaking.

Tony actually laughed at that – and much to his surprise, Steve did too.

...........................

“I can’t believe I just did that,” Steve gasped, falling back against the now-closed door. His chest was heaving and his hair was still sticking up oddly where he’d run a hand through it in the heat of conversation.

Nobody had been surprised that he and Tony vanished before the food showed up.

Tony stared at Steve, drinking in the expression on his face. He seemed… lighter. Happier. Flooded with adrenaline, with success – he looked the way he looked when they walked off the battlefield on a great day, a day when everything went according to plan. 

“I can’t either,” Tony admitted, reaching out to touch the smile lines creasing his face. “You were fantastic. You’re always fantastic.”

“I was scared shitless,” Steve laughed.

“Nobody knew,” Tony assured him. “Except probably Natasha, but you know how she is.”

“She knew – she knew that, and she knew about us. I had no idea she knew. That was…. that was supposed to be your Christmas present, actually.” Steve admitted, pulling him close and pressing their foreheads together.

“Really?” Tony asked. They hadn’t gotten terribly far in the gift giving before his own ill-timed attempt at romanticism had destroyed their holiday evening. “You mean you got me more than just Captain America socks?”

“You haven’t taken your tree down,” Steve observed, chuckling softly. “You would have noticed that there was a card. You didn’t read it.”

“I was sort of pretending the tree didn’t exist,” Tony admitted. “And I haven’t really been up to my room, much. Dummy brought me fresh clothes.”

“And left the razor…”

“Probably afraid I’d cut my chin off after so little sleep,” Tony suggested – and there it was again, that smile. How long had it been since he’d seen Steve smile like that? “We really have an incredible team.”

“We do,” Steve agreed, and kissed him. One turned into two, two into a half dozen, then more. Tony found himself pressed against the wall, tipping his face up and gasping for breath in the moments Steve abandoned his mouth for the sake of his ear or the hollow of his throat.

Tony peeled his mouth away, lips wet and full and tasting of Steve. “I’m sorry I fucked up Christmas.”

“I’m sorry I panicked,” Steve went in for another kiss, but Tony pulled away, wanting to say more. It felt like no amount of words would convey the depth of his embarrassment, the sheer magnitude of his failure.

“Steve…”

“Tony,” Steve murmured, running strong fingers along his jaw, then down his front. “You’re wrecked. Let me take care of you? Shower, a shave, put you to bed….”

“I do like bed,” Tony managed faintly, exhaustion and arousal warring within his chest. When Steve kissed him next his hands went for the buttons of Tony’s shirt, slid beneath soft fabric, and pressed firmly, comfortingly over his heart.

...........................

The next morning he woke up to a full tray – French toast, eggs, bacon, four massive slabs of ham, a jug of orange juice, sautéed potatoes, a pile of croissants, and Steve.

Steve was by far the most delicious thing of all. He peered at Tony – rumpled, exhausted, too-thin Tony - as though he was the most precious thing on the planet.

“You brought me breakfast in bed,” Tony stared at the spread, unable to help the faint grin on his face. He wasn’t sure anyone had ever ordered him breakfast in bed. “You… tell me you didn’t cook all this.”

“I woke up at four,” Steve shrugged. “I fed the others, too…. it’s sort of a special occasion, after all.” He reached for a croissant but didn’t take a bite, instead rolling the warm bread back and forth in his hands.

“Is it?” 

“Yeah,” Steve looked out the window. “I guess I – I want this to be a fresh start. For us. I want to do things right.”

Tony felt a lump form in his throat, unwanted.

Steve was still looking away – it was a habit of his when he felt awkward or embarrassed. “I also wanted to invite you… if you aren’t too busy, I’d love to have you sit in on one of my therapy sessions. I think it might be beneficial.”

“Steve…”

“I just feel like sometimes I say one thing and you hear another, or the other way around. If we could, you know. Actually communicate.”

“You sound like an ad for Dr. Phil,” Tony wrinkled his nose. Steve gave him that bewildered look he wore so often when a reference sailed past him, and Tony took pity. He reached out to touch Steve’s knee. “I’ll go.”

The blonde’s face lit up. “Yeah?”

Tony poked the edge of his tray with his fork. “Yeah, of course. It’ll be good for us… but Steve, there’s something else I have to tell you.” 

Oh, god. This was the part where he ruined everything. This was the part where Steve looked at him with disgust and left the room, leaving Tony with nothing but rapidly cooling French toast for company. “I, uh.”

“Yeah?”

“I sort of asked Pepper to marry me.”

...........................

The Loeb boathouse was done up to the nines in elegance – just the way Tony had envisioned it. Globes hung suspended overhead at varying heights, their colors shifting subtly and casting swaths of soft light across the walls. Tables draped with under-lit flowers, a fifties era soda fountain set up in a corner. The stage took up one entire end of the room and was surrounded by white flowers tied in bunches with ribbons, each a different color of the rainbow.

Steve stirred his vanilla coke and looked out over the lake. Colored lights faded in and out, reflecting across the still surface in twinkling lines. “You really don’t have to do this, Pepper.”

The redhead – exquisite in a creamy gown that gathered at one shoulder and wrapped around her before fanning out like a mermaid’s tail – laughed. 

“I do, Steve. It’s hardly a sacrifice – I’m happy to be here, and I believe in what we’re doing.”

“Stark Industries – “

“Could use some good press!” Pepper smiled, almost sadly. “Despite your own discomfort, which you are completely projecting on me, by the way, this is a positive thing. We’re supposed to be recognizing and celebrating today, and you look like you’re about to attend a funeral. Smile! I don’t mind at all, Steve.”

Steve’s expression was a mix of staunch regret and relief, so Tony leaned in and kissed her cheek. “You’re a doll. Off the cuff and everything,” he grinned.

“How hard can it be?” she flashed them a grin.

With that, Pepper left the pair alone on the deck overlooking the lake and swept inside. Spotlights turned on her immediately and applause broke out, several young women at the tables leaping to their feet in admiration. Tony watched the rest of the crowd follow suit and couldn’t help but smile; Pepper deserved all the recognition they heaped on her.

“They’re pretty sharp for a group of young people,” he said, squeezing Steve’s hand as subtly as he could. He could feel the tension in the other man’s body and wished, silently, that he knew a way to ease it.

“I chickened out,” Steve pulled his hand away. “Can you believe that? I’ve punched Hitler in the jaw a thousand times. I once _wrestled a submarine_ \- and yet I chickened out of addressing a pack of teenagers.”

Tony shrugged. He’d really been shocked that Steve had volunteered in the first place; he was a great speaker, but an event like this? He’d hoped, sure. Hoped, but not counted on it.

“To be fair, they’re extremely educated, motivated teenagers?” That didn’t seem to make Steve feel any better. “You’ve been a huge help with this,” he said, trying to sound gentle. “And on top of the gala, you were so good about the whole thing with Pepper – and when you suggested we use the boathouse for something other than a wedding, I really – well, I should have thought of that much, much sooner.”

“They’re good kids,” Steve said, fiercely. 

“Of course they are.”

Tony looked through the windows and watched his gorgeous CEO take the mic in hand. Her white dress picked up the rainbow hues of the lights above, slowly shifting. Pepper was meant to be here as a VIP – as Stark Industries was the second largest financial backer this evening - but the moment Steve had expressed his very real, deep-rooted fears about talking to a crowd of LBGT activists she’d offered to take over and introduce his award for him.

God bless Pepper.

“I just… I just can’t….”

“Shh,” Tony murmured, giving Steve’s fingers a warm squeeze. The crowd was singularly captivated by Pepper – she earned a round of laughter, then called up another talented young person to take the stage. “It doesn’t matter.”

The charity gala that evening was the massively overblown brainchild of several different parents. Firstly, Fury’s suggestion that the Avengers take up charity causes partially funded by SHIELD and Tony’s promise to double their input via his personal fortune. Secondly, Steve’s suggestion that instead of jumping to ridiculous ends, Tony use the boathouse for some other gathering and put marrying Pepper on the backburner, at least until he and Steve could sort the issues between them out. That was fair, and easy enough. 

Tony privately suspected Pepper had been relieved.

_“I do love you, Tony,” she’d said. “But I think some separation of our public and private lives is healthier for both of us.”_

_“Yeah?” he asked, smiling wistfully._

_“Yeah,” she’d agreed. “And also, I have a date on Friday.”_

Pepper, watching Steve’s anxious face, had suggested the target group – teen activists in the LGBTQ communities around the United States, recognizing work towards equality, justice, and acceptance. The caveat? Teens could not apply, but rather had to be nominated by their peers.

It was a good idea.

Inside the boathouse Pepper’s award speech ended – it was the last presentation of the evening and so she rolled into a flawlessly executed introduction of the evening’s keynote speaker. Tony had already mingled with the crowd a bit, chatting and shaking hands, almost embarrassed by the quantity of adulation in the faces of their award winners – _almost_ , because honestly, it took a lot to embarrass Tony Stark these days.

It had been nice to shake their hands in person; he and Steve had spent months poring over their application videos and making selections. It turned out being involved in charity, instead of just funding charity, was actually pretty rewarding.

“Wish me luck,” Tony grinned, handed Steve his glass, and flashed peace signs at the kids as he stepped into the room. The mic hooked to the lapel of his jacket flicked on and he flashed the room his best roguish grin.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, voice amplified to perfection. “You know, I really hate speeches. you sure you wouldn’t prefer an impromptu lesson on applied physics? No? We could – I mean we have a lot of helium in those balloons in the back and – okay, Pepper’s giving me the stink eye, no science for us. I guess that means I should thank you for taking time out of your lives to fly to New York and share your stories with us here at Outreach: Assemble….”

Speeches were simple – make a few jokes, keep the length reasonable, by only partially honest. Too honest earned you uncomfortable stares and mass exoduses for the bar…. Not honest enough meant eye rolls and irritated looks. 

Wait – scratch that. Underaged kids meant no bar. _Fuck_ , no bar! Worst gala _ever_.

“You may or may not know that as a kid someone caught me on camera – a real Polaroid Moment – getting a little too personal with one of my closest friends. The photos went as viral as anything did in the eighties – plastered all over the school walls, newspaper, _everything._ I never had to make a decision to come out, and let’s face it, if I had it’s likely I’d be just another depressive billionaire locked in a very, very expensive closet.

“In the end, something that felt like the end of my tiny world meant I had to own who I was and ‘wear it like armor’, to borrow the words of good old Tyrion Lannister.” A few scattered chuckles at that one – god, Tony loved nerds. 

“It also meant that I was spared the trouble of coming out - a step we can all agree pretty much _sucks_. I didn’t have to screw my courage to the sticking place and face down my family, someone did it for me; and that’s all the more reason that so many of you impress the hell out of me.”

Blah-de-blah, a few more thank yous and use-your-powers-for-goods and then Tony was waving his way off the stage, stopping to kiss a few cheeks and blow up a fistbump here and there. There would be plenty of time for obnoxious teenage selfies with the kids later – right now he had a blonde to locate.

Dessert was served, press photos taken, a dance floor cleared. Pepper had ordered the photobooth in the corner and it was definitely a highlight – the line to have your picture taken with props (an astronaut helmet, a sledgehammer, and a truly terrifying unicorn mask amongst others) edged almost all the way back to the bar. The DJ was shockingly good, slick mixes coaxing the largely awkward teenage crowd out onto the dance floor. 

Tony slipped out the back door and found Steve, orange juice in hand, settled on a rock and gazing out over the water. “You look like a painting,” Tony said, hunkering down next to him. “I’ll call it ‘A portrait in pensiveness’, or some bullshit.”

“That’s a terrible name for a painting,” Steve smiled, slightly. “At least your speech was good.”

Tony grinned. “I hate speeches.”

“I know.” For a moment the quiet between them was almost awkward, than Steve shrugged and seemed to relax. “The party’s still going strong, I guess?”

“Yeah,” Tony agreed. “They’re tearing up the dance floor. I asked the DJ to pull the queerest music he knew – whatever the kids are listening to, you know. No Village People though; to hell with the Village People.”

Steve’s eyebrows crept up his forehead. “You put a lot of thought into this.”

“I know. Do you know how long Pep’s been trying to get me to care about things like gala playlists?” Tony ran a hand through his (already roguishly spiked, thank you very much) hair and wrinkled his nose. “Hint: It’s measurable in decades.”

Steve laughed outright at that and stood, offering out his hand. Tony took it without hesitation and found himself pulled in, tucked up against Steve’s warmth as they began to dance to the music floating out across the water.

“That was terribly forward, Captain,” Tony smooshed his face back against Steve’s shoulder, enjoying the feel of him. He let Steve take the lead. “What if I’d said no?”

Steve chuckled against him, and the motion set a knot of something hard and metal pushing at Tony through the thin material of his dress shirt. “I’m starting to think you’re a sure thing, Stark.” 

“Yeah, well.”

Curious, Tony ran a hand up Steve’s stomach and poked at the hard bulge pressing against his clavicle. Steve stiffened as he worked his fingers under his collar, drawing out the dogtags he wore there and staring at the new addition to the chain.

It was a ring – it was _the _ring.__

__Tony closed his fingers around it to stop his hand from shaking. “Steve?”_ _

__Steve was looking away, blush high on his perfect cheekbones. “It seemed a shame to throw it away.”_ _

__“When did you…”_ _

__Steve kept dancing, and Tony forced himself to continue along in step. “Actually, I took it at Christmas. I figured you’d notice eventually, but you never said anything.”_ _

__“I threw the box away,” Tony admitted, embarrassed. The figurative word was ‘threw’ – it had actually been chucked into the lab incinerator in a fit of pique, but Steve didn’t need to know that. “I was …. mad.”_ _

__“With good reason.”_ _

__“Maybe.” Tony snuck the edge of the ring over his thumb and pressed his face against Steve again, taking a steadying breath. “Why did you keep it?”_ _

__“It was a gift. You made it. I didn’t want to throw it away.”_ _

__Tony closed his eyes, trying to find the right words, not wanting to assume, not wanting to misstep. They’d started over, sort of. It would be _just like him_ to fuck it up all over again. “Your answer hasn’t changed.”_ _

__“No,” Steve agreed, tightening his grip infinitesimally. “But it might, someday.”_ _

__Tony was very quiet, listening to the sound of Steve’s heartbeat beneath his lapels. “You know,” he said softly, after a few moments. “I can live with that.”_ _

__Then – awfully, horribly, ridiculously – he heard the snap-click of a camera shutter closing._ _

__Tony jerked away from Steve, feeling his throat close up. He turned and squinted into the darkness – a scrawny, freckle, brown-haired teen with a huge camera around his neck. “What the actual fuck do you think you’re doing?” he growled, stepping forward._ _

__“Tony, come on,” Steve laid a hand on his shoulder. The kid’s eyes were wide as dinner-plates in the moonlight. Sure, he looked harmless – but anything could be lurking beneath that dim-looking exterior._ _

__“S-s-soh my god you’re Tony Stark, you’re – and you’re - ”_ _

__His eyes flicked over to Steve, mouth falling open._ _

__“Captain America,” Steve finished for him, gently. “We didn’t mean to surprise you.”_ _

__“You took our fucking picture,” Tony felt his hands start to shake, felt his cheeks heating up, felt an all-too-familiar sense of sick dread. He’d finally gotten onto stable ground with Steve; why, why why why of all the moments to have their photo taken…. “Why the fuck do you fuckers keep taking my fucking – “_ _

__“I was trying to get the lights on the water!” The kid leapt back, deceptively nimble for someone so nerdy looking. “Through the trees, I mean, you could – it was silhouetted – fuck, please don’t sue me Mister Stark.”_ _

__“Sue you? I might kill you – “_ _

__“Tony,” Steve said again, drawing him back. “It’s alright.”_ _

__“I… uh,” the teen muttered. “I had no idea you two were… I mean I guess that explains the whole…” he waved a hand at the boathouse. “rainbow thing.”_ _

__“You don’t have a press pass,” Tony glared. What the fuck was the point of shelling out an extra seven thousand dollars for security if scrawny prepubescent paparazzo could sneak through your perimeter?? He considered that further proof that robots were superior to humanity in general. “Seriously - this area was cleared by security hours ago. How the fuck did you get in here?”_ _

__“I … snuck in? I applied for a press pass but I didn’t get one in the lottery – I take photos for my school paper, see, and one of my classmates was nominated so I thought I’d just…”_ _

__“What’s your name?”_ _

__“Peter,” the kid said, nervously. “Peter Parker, sir.”_ _

__Tony pulled away from Steve and started to seriously encroach in the kid’s personal space. “Well, Parker, do me a favor – hand me that memory card and get the hell out of my gala.”_ _

__“It’s not a digital camera, sir. If I – I mean all the shots I’ve got for the paper, they’ll be – “_ _

__“Film,” Tony demanded, sticking his hand out and giving his fingers a pointed waggle. “ _Now._ ”_ _

__Peter lowered his camera unhappily, but before he could crack the camera’s case and pull out the film, was pulling Tony away, gentle and insistent. “He didn’t mean any harm, Tony. Leave it be.”_ _

__“But you – if he – “_ _

__Steve smiled, softly. “It’s _fine_. Didn’t you hear your own speech? It might be for the best – nothing stays secret forever. He’s just trying to get a few pictures for his school paper. With a shot like that he’ll be working for the Daily Bugle in no time.”_ _

__Peter’s expression twisted slightly at that, shifting from morbid fascination to an expression closer to disgust. Tony looked from him to Steve, heart hammering in his chest. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”_ _

__“I do.”_ _

__“Then you’re fucking crazy,” Tony groused, panic stirring uncertainly at the edges of his mind._ _

__“Like a fox,” Steve laughed and squeezed his hand comfortingly. “Come on, Tony, it'll work itself out. Now give this kid a press pass and let’s head back inside.”_ _

__Peter perked up, thrilled. “Really?”_ _

__“Yeah. And try the vanilla cokes while you’re at it – they’re great,” Steve waved him up, gave Tony’s hand a squeeze, and headed back towards the party._ _

__

____

...........................

These days it took a lot to surprise Tony Stark, but when he found a manila envelope on his fire escape two weeks later…. Well, he was surprised. After running it through half a dozen security scans he flicked open the seal and spread out a flat sheet of negatives along with two surprisingly good prints.

The photo was of the boat house – mostly. The trees and water were definitely there, but silhouetted against the colorful backdrop was a shadow – two figures wrapped against one another, dancing. Tony thought he could see the glint off the edge of the ring, just barely.

It was a great shot – and there was a note scribbled on the back.

_Thanks for the press pass – my editor was psyched with my shots of Gwen and the rest of the winners._

_Everyone needs their secrets, even super heroes. Super heroes especially. - PP_

“How about that,” said Tony, folding the snapshot in half and tucking it into his wallet with a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!!!!!!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I Thought You Always Wanted to Get Married in the Boathouse](https://archiveofourown.org/works/962309) by [geniusbillionaireplaygirlphilanthropist (teaberryblue)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaberryblue/pseuds/geniusbillionaireplaygirlphilanthropist)




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